The Bulls defeated the Lions 31-7 on Saturday to stay in contention for a place in the Super 14 semifinals.

Springbok winger Bryan Habana scored a try and set up two more at Ellis Park, and Wynand Oliver also scored two tries for the Bulls.

Habana cut inside sharply from the left wing to throw a neat pass for blindside flanker Pedrie Wannenburg, who in turn passed to Olivier to score easily in the 16th minute.

The Lions struck back immediately, driving well from a lineout close to the Bulls' line to get flanker Ernst Joubert over and for Andre Pretorius to convert.

In the 25th, Habana got his hands through a tackle and fed Akona Ndungane for a try out left.

The halftime score was 10-7, and the Bulls needed two more tries and the victory for a bonus point to get into the top four of the Super 14 standings.

A minute after the interval, Springbok centre Olivier took an inside pass from flyhalf Derrick Hougaard to score unchallenged under the posts.

Hougaard kicked the conversion for his first points of the match.

Then Habana scored his own try as he ran at full speed onto a pass from scrumhalf Fourie du Preez, with Hougaard converting again.

The Lions threatened with some good attacks of their own, but were let down by poor handling when a converted try might have caused the Bulls some concern. But they turned possession over instead, and gave Bulls center JP Nel a chance to wriggle over for the final try of the match.

The win pushed the Bulls into fourth place ahead of the Chiefs. Both teams have 32 points from 11 games.

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