Not a great bech as we have last too much talent:
Read this though:
Duane Vermeulen got through a semi-contact session on Tuesday afternoon apparently without any complaints, but it is still touch and go whether he will be named in the Stormers team when it is announced later on Wednesday.
It will all depend on how Vermeulen feels when he reports to training early on Wednesday. The Stormers are desperate to play him against the Sharks in Saturday’s semifinal, but with a possible final to look forward to a week later, coach Allister Coetzee has said he won’t risk his influential loose-forward if there is any doubt about his readiness. (Well he is not on the team sheet so wont play. But should be ready in a weeks time)
Perhaps the smart money should be on Vermeulen being named, or bracketed, in the side when it is announced at lunch-time. But that won’t necessarily mean he will play as if he was named and didn’t make an appearance when the teams run out onto Newlands at 5pm on Saturday it wouldn’t be the first time it has happened this season.
What the team announcement is likely to unveil for certain are a couple of changes to the side that played against the Rebels two weeks ago -- and with no other injuries to report, all of them are likely to be geared at strengthening the unit.
The big step forward for the Stormers will be the return of physical young Springbok lock Eben Etzebeth, a man who has been out for a few weeks now with an ankle injury but who has been preparing during that time for this game. He will have a massive role to play against a physical Sharks pack, a battle that Coetzee suspects may decide the semifinal.
“All South African derbies are physical and nothing much has changed over the years when it comes to local teams playing one another -- the team that gets the physical ascendancy usually wins,” said Coetzee this week.
What he says is true, and the last two times the Sharks have come to Newlands for Super Rugby it has been in the physicality stakes that they came second. Last year the Stormers smashed them (NOtethe wordsmashed them), scoring four tries to nil, in a game that prompted Sharks coach John Plumtree afterwards to say that the balance of power when it came to physicality in South African rugby had shifted to the Cape (A true statement - given the bulle pack also got a hiding causing the commentators to say its not often you see bulle pack being shoved around).
This last sentence Moz sums it up for me. However the Stormers pack without Vermuelen and Burger is not quite the same. The sharkie would not cope with a full Stormers pack in my opinion just as they could do in the match mentioned. It is a huge misfortune that we have not seen a full Stormers pack in action this season both from our own and a Bok point of view.
