When DHL Stormers coach John Dobson looked back on the 80 minutes his team delivered against the Dragons in their penultimate Vodacom URC league match, it was the standout performances of a few relative newcomers that caught his focus.
In a game book marked by the emotional crowd farewell to the franchise’s most capped player and former Dragons stalwart Brok Harris, and celebrated for being Damian Willemse’s 100th cap, the play of openside flank Paul de Villiers and the performance of a rejigged scrum was influential in a 48-12 win that propelled the Stormers to fifth position on the log with one game to play.
7⃣ Tries. 5⃣ Points. See you back here on Friday for more. #STOvDRA #iamastormer @Vodacom #URC pic.twitter.com/ArZw8eGAZq
— DHL Stormers (@THESTORMERS) May 10, 2025
Former Durban North schoolboy Vernon Matongo was making his first start for the Stormers after a couple of cameos off the bench at loosehead, and he and Sazi Sandi were part of a scrum that forced several scrum penalties. De Villiers was all over the field, both as a torment to the Dragons at the breakdown and up in support as a carrier, and generally continued his upward progress at this level of the game.
But while he reckons Matongo is “going to be huge” and that De Villiers is a special player, Dobson said he couldn’t take credit for the hit either player has made in their introduction to URC rugby with the Stormers.
“I would love to take credit for it, but I can’t, as the truth is that we have been helped by the injuries in that I have been taught a valuable lesson,” said Dobson.
“Had Deon (Fourie) not been injured I would probably have carried on playing him and we would not have got to see Paul get his opportunity. I always knew Paul was a star for the future and very capable, but I wasn’t going to back him just yet. Now that he has got to play he has shown he is more than ready and more than good enough.
“The way players such as Paul and Vernon have progressed is a big plus that we are getting out of these last few weeks of the season. The depth has been grown, but as I say, sometimes that has been by accident rather than necessarily by design.”
PLEASED WITH INTENSITY
The Stormers’ win continued their good form and upward trend on the performance graph as they went into a short turnaround before Friday night’s final game against Cardiff with their seven-try rout of the Dragons in conditions that even the visiting coach admitted was a leveller in the game.
Dobson said he was pleased with the physical intensity of the performance and reckoned the team had satisfied his demand for no drop from the Benetton game. But he also didn’t really know whether to laugh or cry when they were told after the game that Benetton, who his team thrashed 56-5 two weeks ago, had beaten Glasgow Warriors in Treviso.
That result means the Sharks are likely to end third on the log, as they host Scarlets on Saturday whereas Glasgow, who are just one point ahead of the fourth placed Sharks going into the final round, finish off with a perilous trip to Dublin, where they lost 52-0 to Leinster in a Champions Cup last month.
THEY WERE HOPING TO PLAY SHARKS
The Stormers, rightly believing that a two-hour flight within the country is better than the long-haul flight to Europe when it comes to the quarterfinal round for which they have now qualified, were desperately hoping to play the Sharks, meaning a trip up the coast to Durban. That was on the cards as for several weeks, it seemed the Sharks were destined to finish fourth, with fourth hosting fifth in the first game of the Finals Series.
However, the Stormers know that engineering, as Dobson put it, the situation so they can still go to Durban, by losing to Cardiff and coming sixth, would be the wrong way to go about things and of course, they owe the DHL Stadium a good performance as they say farewell to their fans until next season. They are also playing on Friday, and could be overtaken by more than one team if they lost, and would look stupid if the Sharks then lost to the Scarlets and still finished fourth.
“We pretty much thought that we were going to go to Durban the whole time,” said Dobson.
“That looks increasingly unlikely, especially when you see the team Leinster put out tonight. They’re going to go full strength next week [against Glasgow], we expect them to win that game, which would mean we go to Scotstoun.”
Why the Stormers would prefer Durban has more to do than just the travel - the Scotstoun is not a stadium the Stormers have a good record at.
“Last year, Glasgow were at their full pomp, and I know we lost that quarterfinal by 10-plus at the end, but we were in it until quite late in the game. So if we have to go that way, we will go that way,” said Dobson.
“If things go wrong next Friday against Cardiff, we’ll have to go to Kings Park. I wouldn’t complain if we had to go to Pretoria to face the Bulls either. But we would never jerry-rig a game; we play on a Friday night, so we have to wrap our heads around going to Scotstoun.
“We’ve got scar tissue there, but we’ve also got a point to prove. There’s not the fear that it would’ve been,” he added in reference to the recent Glasgow results, which include a home defeat to another SA team, the Bulls.
The Stormers are set to name their team on Tuesday this week.