Per Supersport
The DHL Stormers beating the Chiefs was not on its own what made the result of the big match of the local Vodacom Super Rugby weekend significant, but how it was achieved and what it represented.
Two years ago during a horrible season that the franchise would rather forget, the Sharks beat the Chiefs at Kings Park with a man less on the field. It wasn’t a result that sent massive positivity flooding through Durban rugby. The talk afterwards was about the sending off of Bismarck du Plessis and Frans Steyn (the Chiefs also had Liam Messam red carded) rather than the result. And early last year, the Lions beat the Chiefs in Hamilton.( THE CHIEFS SHOULD HAVE GOT MANY MORE CARDS THAT DAY. WHAT A TRAVESTY THAT WAS!)
But mention of the Lions introduces the main point of why the Stormers win at a pulsating Newlands at the weekend was so momentous – it was achieved by a team effectively playing fast tempo Kiwi rugby and embracing an attacking game and, most importantly, it now means that South Africa have two teams that have managed to get into that space. (Three is you count the Cheetahs who dont quite have the personnel due to consistent looting of their player resources)
The Lions had the weekend off and they are only playing Australian sides from the Australasian conference this year (Lucky break for the kiwis!!. But last year they got it right against the Kiwis, particularly at home and towards the end of the competition, and Stormers coach Robbie Fleck summed it up on Saturday night when referring to the Easter Saturday showdown with the Johannesburg side – next week we play another Kiwi team.
Okay, that might be slightly flattering to the Lions, who this season haven’t been as sharp and as good as they were in 2016. But we do know what he means, and they do pose the same challenges and obstacles that the New Zealand teams do. To be fair, the Cheetahs also long ago embraced a game that was high tempo and under Franco Smith they appeared to perfect it at domestic level last year. They just can’t get it right at Super Rugby level and perhaps are distracted.
The Bulls want to play that way but are struggling and their latest result, a defeat to the Sunwolves, appears to confirm the growing impression that what is needed is a change in coaching personnel. The Sharks want to go in that direction and are moving there under Robert du Preez, it may just take a bit of time for them to shake the perception that their main strength lies in the pack. They have many talented players at the back, they may just need to mature.(As of course noted by Beeno!!!
Not that lack of experience is a problem to the Stormers, and the central element of their success so far this season is a message that should not be lost on South African rugby as a whole – it is the massive impact some decent coaching and perhaps the infusion of a bit of foreign influence into the set-up can have.(ESPECIALLY WHEN THE BEST SOUTH AFRICAN COACHES ARE NOT COACHING SA TEAMS!)
The Stormers never made many player gains during the off-season. The players they acquired from outside of the Cape borders were mainly inexperienced youngsters. And yet the metamorphosis from a team struggling to embrace a new game to one that has become skilful and slick and is now challenging the Lions to be recognised as the South African side that has come closest to perfecting it is clear for all to see.
Much of that comes down to what the Stormers did in the off-season under their New Zealand skills coach Paul Feeney. The degree of specialisation has also had a positive impact, with John Dobson’s contribution as a specialist breakdown expert also now being recognised.
It is that, what happens in the dug-out under the guidance of a head coach in Robbie Fleck who took the second half of last year off to go and study for himself what was making the more successful overseas franchises click, that has enabled the Stormers to turn around the disaster of last year’s quarterfinal. The Chiefs, who were up for the game and tried to beat the Stormers by injecting high tempo, would not have recognised the Stormers as the team that they beat 60-21 just eight months ago.
The key was that the Stormers didn’t just go into mourning when they got thumped in their one match against Kiwi opposition last year. Instead they resolved to learn from it. They introduced Kiwi days to their training weeks, where they resolved to do everything at a furious tempo so that they would be taken out of their comfort zones, and in so doing, becoming more comfortable playing at that pace.
There was a point when the unlucky but highly promising Cobus Wiese was yellow carded when it looked like we might just get a repeat of last year. Although they’d scored an early try, the Stormers looked like they were scrambling. But they hung in and then looked comfortable again. Their defence in the last quarter, when the Chiefs were winning a lot more ball, was outstanding. Their conditioning is also a key element of what they are getting right.(AS POINTED OUT BY BEENO TO DR MOZ!!!
Of course, one win doesn’t make a season, and Fleck acknowledged that it gets even tougher from here. The Lions will be coming to Newlands this week off a bye, so the Stormers will probably be best advised to set aside the training week for recovery rather than anything frenetic. The win over the Chiefs would have taken a lot out of them. After that comes a three match tour to New Zealand. And after the Chiefs result the other Kiwi teams will be aware of what the Stormers can do. Forewarned is fore armed.
But at this point the Stormers have made Africa Conference 1 into a ridiculously one-sided race, one made more ludicrous with every passing week by the Bulls’ incomprehensible inability to get it right.(I DO HOPE OU CERUDUNCE WINDPOMP AND MEANOU ARE PAYING ATTENTIUON. THE BULLE HAVE A GOOD SQUAD ON PAPER BUT LACK INTELLECTUAL ABILITY!!) The loss to the Sunwolves, though not completely unexpected as the Japanese team has improved immeasurably this season, was a new low. And the other contenders in the conference group, the Cheetahs, are as poor as the Bulls, and took 50 against the Stormers the previous week.
The other African conference is far more of a dog fight, with the Sharks’ narrow win over the Jaguares in an error-ridden game in Durban giving them some breathing space, but not much if you consider that they still have to travel to Buenos Aires to face the South Americans later in the competition.
Still, coach Du Preez and his players will have been pleased that they got through the initial stage of the season building to their first bye with just two defeats, and both of those, to the Reds and the Lions away, were games they could have won. His team are building confidence, something that winning tends to do. (YES OU ROOITWIT MAY YET HAVE SOMETHING TO SMILE ABOUT AS THE SHARKS ARE GOING TO GET BETTER AS THE SEASON PROGRESS BARRING INJURIES AND BENT DOWN UNDER REFS OF COURSE)
There was one other game this past weekend featuring a South African team and it must be said the Kings came didn’t send out a bad advert in their narrow defeat to the Western Force on the changes sweeping through the game here. Some of the six tries they scored were top quality, and their ability to exploit turn-over possession is becoming quite notable.
THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGING OAKS.
i AM CONCERNED THAT THE STORMERS WITH THE SMALL MEN IN THEIR PACK AND SMALL BACKS MAY WILT AS TIME GOES ON. RUGBY IS A HARD GAME AND THE LITTLE OAKS TAKE A REAL BATTERING. THIS CALLS FOR SQUAD DEPTH AND ROTATION.
