Stormers ‘up against it’ after poor start to their URC season

The Stormers are firmly up against it after a poor start to their United Rugby Championship (URC) campaign was compounded by a 28-17 loss to Glasgow Warriors in Stellenbosch over the past weekend.

This has left the Stormers as the lowest ranked South African team on the URC log at 13^th heading into the November international break, although they do have a game in hand on all non SA teams in the competition.

 Their loss against Glasgow on Saturday was their third in five games this season, after they started off with a three game overseas tour where they suffered two defeats and picked up one win.

They then seemed to have turned a corner on their return home, after an impressive bonus point win over Munster in Cape Town a week earlier, only for them to follow that up with a dreadful performance against Glasgow.

When the URC resumes at the end of November, the Stormers will take on the Sharks in what could prove to be an extremely important match in Durban that could make a big impact on both teams campaigns.

“That will be a massive game for us. We are up against it now. Today (Saturday) would have been important for the log and our morale going into the break,” explained Stormers Director of Rugby John Dobson after the match.

“We know we aren’t the biggest chequebook team in the league, but we pride ourselves on exceeding the sum of our parts. I’m not sure we did that today.”

Double blow

The Stormers were also dealt a double blow in the first half against Glasgow, losing Springboks Damian Willemse and Ben-Jason Dixon to injury and they will hope that they won’t be ruled out for too long.

“Losing Damian was a big blow for our plans around this game. It was a massive blow. Losing two Springboks in the first half was a concern, playing against a team with 17 internationals,” admitted Dobson.

Heading into the match the Stormers also shifted a number of players around in their backline due to the return of Bok flyhalf Manie Libbok, which saw Willemse shift to inside centre, Dan du Plessis move to outside centre and Ruhan Nel slot in on the wing, but Dobson said that hadn’t played a part in their poor performance.

“That wasn’t the reason we lost. We can look at ourselves individually around how well we played within that structure. The lesson for me as a coach is that we tried to get some energy on the field, because we wanted to blow it open, but at the end we had nothing left,” said Dobson.

“We were trying to chase it with 14 men, which was tough. I don’t feel the structure was the problem, how we individually operated within it was more my concern.

“As a team, we could’ve worked harder. Glasgow deserved to win.  They are a good team, well organised and we were patchy.”