ex Supersport
A quickly advancing defensive line and unified physical intensity at the breakdown enabled the DHL Stormers to overcome a Waratahs team that was way too orientated towards keeping ball in hand to score a crucial 32-18 Vodacom Super Rugby win over the tournament champions in Sydney on Saturday.
The third game on tour is always a crisis point for a South African travelling team if they’ve lost the opening two games, so the Stormers deserve a lot of credit for the way they stood up after two disappointing defeats to New Zealand teams.
On the other side of the Tasman Sea, as well as at home against the Chiefs just before their departure from South Africa, the Stormers’ lack of physical stature in the back three was cruelly exposed. But although both Waratahs' tries in Sydney were scored by the wings, the men in the middle for the Stormers this time prevented that weakness from being enough of a factor.
Damian de Allende and Juan de Jongh were outstanding in the way they cut down the space on their opposing midfield and forced them into mistakes, and the loose-forwards also played their part in applying constant pressure, both in cutting down that space and attacking the breakdowns.
It was a unified, concerted and cohesive effort from the Stormers forwards that prevented the ball fetching abilities of Waratahs flanker Michael Hooper from being the telling factor that it is so often is. By slowing down the Waratahs’ ball, it cut down the opportunity for the big men out wide to exploit their advantage in height and weight on their direct opponents.
Make no mistake, the 125kg Waratahs right wing, Teqele Naiyaravoro, did do that with the one clear opportunity he enjoyed. The big man made it look too easy as he took a pass from Israel Folau, who had swivelled into the line for his only really strong statement of the match, and powered through the Stormers down the right flank to score the first try after 14 minutes.
That cancelled out an earlier Demetri Catrakilis penalty to take the Waratahs into a 5-3 lead, and at that stage it looked ominous for the Stormers if the Waratahs were going to be able to get the ball wide. However, thanks to the physical intensity at the breakdowns, the excellent Stormers' reading of the plays of Waratahs flyhalf Michael Foley and the efforts of the Stormers midfield, the man mountain was never really a factor in the game again.
After 16 minutes Catrakilis regained the lead for the Stormers with a successful penalty, and with the Stormers scrum increasingly dominant, as it has been for most of the season, the Waratahs attempts to take on the Stormers with structured attack kept on running into blind alleys.
The statistics for the season before this game showed that the Stormers hadn’t been allowed to play the same game that Western Province employed to win the Currie Cup last year. In the domestic competition, the Cape side relied on excellent defence and won by counter-punching the opposition off turn-over ball, as the statistic of them scoring 64 per cent of their 44 tries from unstructured play showed.
This season so far the statistic has been remarkably different, with the Stormers' stats before the Sydney game showing that they had scored 64 per cent of their tries from structured play. In this game they forced the sort of mistakes from the Waratahs that WP had managed from their opponents in the Currie Cup, and the upshot was that they enjoyed more scoring opportunities than they have all season and won with a four-try bonus point.
An example of the Stormers profiting from opposition mistakes was when the Waratahs failed to control a ball out wide. Hooker Scarra Ntubeni kicked it through, and Damian de Allende was up to score what was the first Stormers try in Sydney for eight years. Catrakilis’ conversion made it 13-5 after 22 minutes and the Stormers had experienced an important confidence booster.
The Waratahs did fight back before the break, and there were elements again of the Stormers being shown up for being too light out wide when Rob Horne went over for a try on the stroke of halftime that, with the Foley conversion, took the home team into a 15-13 lead.
However, with the aid of a key substitution at flyhalf, where Kurt Coleman came on for Demetri Catrakilis, the Stormers regained the lead within seven minutes of the start of the second half and it was an advantage they never relinquished. Coleman did miss a 51m penalty attempt not long after he came onto the field, but it was his little chip kick that put the pacy Kobus van Wyk in for the second Stormers try that really set them on the road to their win.
Coleman just brings so much more to the Stormers' attacking game than Catrakilis, and although it was defence, rather than attack that won this game for the Cape side, thought must be given to letting Coleman continue in the No 10 jersey going forward.
The Waratahs, it has to be said, have seldom been as woeful as they were in this match, and perhaps they might blame the bye they have just come off for the rustiness that may have contributed to their plethora of spilled balls. A lot of the time it was due to the Stormers’ good work as they forced the pressure situations, but there were also many occasions when pressure had nothing to do with it.
Foley missed some kicks he would normally have slotted too, though the one miss involved the ball bouncing back off the post and it nearly resulted in a try for the Waratahs. Last year, when they were a lot more clinical than they have been most of the way in 2015, they probably would have scored. Instead they had to rely on another penalty, this time from right in front of the posts, to reduce the deficit to two points.
It was anyone’s game going into the last 10 minutes, but it was the Stormers who were applying most of the pressure and enjoying most of the territorial advantage. The Waratahs were looking more and more frustrated when they tried to attack from structured play, and it was surprising that they did not realise the folly of trying the same thing over and over again considering the brains they have in their coaching box.
But persist they did, and it wasn’t that surprising when Stormers skipper De Jongh capped his own impressive game by intercepting a pass and sending his midfield partner De Allende in for the try that, with the conversion, put the issue beyond doubt as the Stormers took a 27-18 lead with seven minutes to go.
Then, just for good measure, one of those unstructured play moments that made Cheslin Kolbe so lethal in last year’s Currie Cup but which he hasn’t often been presented with in Super Rugby, presented itself and the fullback was able to run almost the full length of the field to score against a tired and disorganised Waratahs defensive system that had seen an 18 phase build-up falter. It pretty much summed up the Australian team’s night.
SCORES
DHL STORMERS 32 – Tries: Damian de Allende 2, Kobus van Wyk and Cheslin Kolbe; Conversions: Demetri Catrakilis and Kurt Coleman 2; Penalties: Demetri Catrakilis 2.
WARATAHS 18 – Tries: Teqele Naiyaravoro and Rob Horne; Conversion: Michael Foley; Penalties: Michael Foley 2.
