Stormers’ growth aided by finding new ways to win

The DHL Stormers duly completed their second calendar year without losing to a fellow South African team, and by the time they play a local team again in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship, it will be 26 and a half months since their last defeat in a derby, which was to the Emirates Lions in early December 2021.
Their coach John Dobson will be the first to acknowledge though that the last two wins, against the Vodacom Bulls two days before Christmas and against the Hollywoodbets Sharks on old year’s eve, have been mighty close. And in both they made heavy weather of putting opponents away when they should have.
In their 16-15 win over a Sharks team that had clearly come to play, and which showed that in the first five minutes with the ferocity with which they tackled and hit the loose scrums, there were times when they had to dig deep. Like when they went behind for the first time in the 57th minute and lost replacement prop Ali Vermaak to a yellow card in the process.
But that they are getting through those situations and winning close games is pleasing their coach, and it was also something opposition coach John Plumtree commented on - “The Stormers are making a habit of winning close games and that says something good about them, there is clearly something good happening here and we know they can put teams away too.”

Indeed, the Stormers have done really well in their tough three-game sequence through December to turn around a narrative that was going against them. Up until the epic win over La Rochelle, when they beat the European champions with the last kick of the game, it was the Stormers who were losing the close ones.
Benetton, Munster and Cardiff were all games on their overseas tour where they were in it until the final seconds of the game but came out on the wrong side of the result, and while the second string team emerged with a lot of credit from their trip to Leicester to play the Tigers in their opening Investec Champions Cup clash, it happened there too.
The indication that their bling isn’t quite there at the moment comes by way of a statistic that shows that apart from the game against Zebre in Stellenbosch at the beginning of December, you have to go back to October to when they last scored a four try bonus point. In the last two seasons that has happened for the Stormers more often than it hasn’t.
But in surviving the period when they were down to 14 men, and in fact outscoring the Sharks 3-0 in that critical period of the game between the 57th and 67th minute, the Stormers showed that they have two things - resilience, and calmness under pressure. You can add street-smartness too, something that helped them win both this game and the one against the Bulls.
“I would very much like for our fizz to come back. There have been one or two moments. But this team has amazing resilience,” said Dobson, who added that it wasn’t just when Vermaak went off that his team were up against it. He also added something that was obvious - the six/two split between forwards and backs worked against his team, for the second week in a row.
“There was a big change for us when Ruhan Nel went off. I said I was comfortable during the week, but Jurie Matthee (a specialist flyhalf) hasn’t even played Varsity Cup at fullback. It cost us in that first try the Sharks scored, when they attacked us off a maul at the end of the first half. Jurie was hanging back and 30 metres from where he should have been. It wasn’t his fault, he just hasn’t trained there.
“We have amazing fight. The fizz and the bling that we want will come back. There are glimpses of it,” he added.

Dobson appeared to admit he might also have made a mistake in not mixing up his selections more in an attempt to manage the players’ energy expenditure over the tough three game sequence spanning the first home Champions Cup game and the two massive and highly physical and intense derbies.
“The story of today, when I was sitting in the coaching box and looked down during the second half and just thought that we have put these guys through the grinder. It was the first time in my career that I felt the message coming up from the players was saying, ‘Listen, we’re out’, instead of the other way around.
“To play La Rochelle, Bulls and then this game…Ruben [van Heerden] played 240 minutes, Neethling [Fouche] 210 minutes. I thought physically we got done. But the way we stayed in the fight and closed the game out was very good.”

Dobson will have to find a new outside centre for the next game, which is the 13 January Champions Cup clash with the other Sharks, the Sale Sharks, because Ruhan Nel was stretchered from the field in the first half with what looked like a serious knee injury.
“I heard a couple of things about the injury, none of them were good,” admitted Dobson.
As the leader of the defence, Nel will be sorely missed, but Dobson has confidence in Suleiman Hartzenberg’s ability to slot into that position. And he also hinted at a possible reinforcement who is soon to arrive, but was stopped from making an announcement after consultation with his media adviser.
With Ben Loader set to return for the Sale game, and Warrick Gelant and Courtnall Skosan also expected to be back in the selection mix, the Stormers shouldn’t have many problems putting out a potent backline. It will be interesting to see though if Dobson sticks with the six/two split after games where his team has had to scramble because of injury.
One thing they should have when they return is energy. They go into a seven day complete rest now before returning the Monday before the Sale game, a rest they richly deserve after coming through what many believed would be the defining phase of their season with three hard fought wins against strong opponents and, in the last two games, in front of appreciative and boisterous crowds of 40 000.
“I’m not sure what it is, maybe it is that everyone got bonuses over Christmas so had money to spend, but the support has been awesome,” said skipper Deon Fourie.
It’s actually easy to understand why the fans are turning up - Capetonians love a winning team, and the Stormers started this sequence with a win in front of a sparse crowd against mighty La Rochelle. That would have fired up support for the Bulls game, and then there was a positive knock-on effect for the Sharks, who also happen to have a lot of support in a city a lot of Durbanites have relocated to.