‘We can still turn our season around,’ says Stormers lock Van Heerden

A season blighted by injuries and near misses has left the Stormers in a difficult position and they want to prove that they have the potential to mix it up with the best when they take on the Bulls in the second North-South United Rugby Championship (URC) derby of the season at Loftus on Saturday afternoon.

The Stormers are currently 10^th on the URC log, and with a tricky two-game away tour to the UK to follow, if they come up short against the Bulls this weekend, and then slip up on tour, it could leave them with too much to do in their finishing home run to make the top eight.

The Cape side can, however, take confidence out of the fact that they should have beaten the Bulls at home earlier this month, with a late missed conversion attempt contributing to one of a number of near misses for them this season.

More clinical

Lock Ruben van Heerden believes that the team have been creating opportunities, but need to be more clinical, and if they can do that at Loftus on Saturday they could give the high flying Bulls a run for their money.

“We know we have potential in this team and we haven’t been living up to our potential this season. But in saying that we have been doing the right things and we have been creating opportunities, we just haven’t been clinical enough,” explained Van Heerden.

“We are doing good things and we need to keep believing in ourselves. We can’t drop our heads. We’ve got a few league games left and we can still turn our season around. We are running out of runway at this stage and we can’t afford to drop any more points going forward.

“It’s going to have to happen sooner rather than later, but we can still do something special in this competition. The motivation is definitely for each other and our fans. They deserve better as well. We are a big franchise and being 10th on the log is not good enough for us, so we are looking to turn that around.”

Devastating loss

The nature of the loss against the Bulls in Cape Town would have been devastating, but the Stormers then followed that up with a poor performance at Ellis Park to go down against the Lions.

Despite those defeats Van Heerden says that they have to shake them off and look forward, or it would only be detrimental to the group heading into such a big match.

“You can’t dwell too long on those marginal losses. They are gut-wrenching. This whole season we have been there and thereabouts with narrow losses. I know it sounds like cliche, but I think it just comes down to us being clinical,” said Van Heerden.

“As a playing group, we said, ‘Listen guys, we are not a bad team despite what everyone thinks and what everyone says’.”