The DHL Stormers’ win over the Vodacom Bulls in Pretoria a few weeks ago was treated as a surprise by many pundits but that view is not shared by their veteran flanker Deon Fourie.
When it was suggested to him in an online press conference that the Stormers’ win was “against the odds” and he was then asked if the result meant that the Cape side had found the recipe for success against the current best local side in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship, the 38-year-old Springbok almost visibly scoffed at the suggestion.
“We’ve always had the recipe to beat the Bulls, we have shown that over the past few years as we have beaten them several times,” said Fourie.
“We lost the game to them here in Cape Town but we were a bit frustrated by that as stats wise we did pretty well.
"We then went on to lose to the Lions in Johannesburg but we also felt that in terms of the stats we didn’t do badly in that game either and it was another we really should have won. We had been building up nicely before that Loftus game and we feel we now have momentum.”
Fourie added that although the results didn’t go their way in the first two derbies in that three derby sequence, the performances had encouraged the team that they were on the right path.
“We knew we were playing well and we just needed to build on the small stuff. We gained confidence from those games and just lost by small margins. We just needed to start winning those small moments,” he said.
Stormers assistant coach Dawie Snyman appears to agree with Fourie on the momentum question.
“We did feel that even though we lost the game, we felt the Cape Town game against the Bulls was the turnaround for us,” said Snyman.
The view is not entirely unsupported. Although the Stormers lost by a solitary point, they scored five tries to four for the Bulls and would have felt they had the game won when Ben-Jason Dixon crossed for a try right at the end that presented what should have been an easy match winning conversion.
To the shock of the Stormers faithful, Clayton Blommetjies missed the kick, but even then the Stormers managed to put in a last gasp sustained attack that suggested they were finishing much the stronger of the two teams.
“You can’t always put a finger on it exactly when it comes to why you don’t get over the line as winners,” said Snyman.
“If you could do that, you’d win every game. There is always work in progress. And we are the type of team that likes to get into our rhythm. All those games were really close, and we had great moments.
"The last pass kept denying us for a while and for a while we couldn’t put it together like we wanted to but since the Cape Town game against the Bulls we feel like we are coming right.”
ONE WIN CAN CHANGE A LOT
The Stormers dug themselves into a bit of a hole with their poor start to the URC season but they feel like there is now light at the end of the tunnel as they head into their 13th round fixture against Scarlets in Llanelli on Saturday.
Scarlets were at one stage sixth on the log, but have now dropped back to the same number of points, 28, as the Stormers, and are on the cusp of the top eight so a win for the visitors would provide a double impact by also hurting one of their strongest rivals for a play-off spot.
For Fourie, that is a good reason to focus exclusively on the immediate task at hand and not look at the two match visit to the northern hemisphere, which concludes with a trip to Belfast to play Ulster, as something that needs to be prepared for as a tour.
“We are not looking beyond this week. If we win this game we will have less pressure against Ulster,” said Fourie.
“It is a very clustered log at the moment. We are in a position where we know one good win could put us back into the top eight.”
THEY'VE BEEN IN THIS POSITION BEFORE
It is not a situation that is unique for the Stormers, for they were in a similar position towards the end of last season, where they had to win two away games to be sure of a top eight finish.
“As Deon says, we can’t get too far ahead of ourselves, what is most important is the game on Saturday and we can’t look beyond that,” said Snyman.
“But last year we were in a very similar situation. We had to beat the Dragons away and Connacht away to make the top eight, and we won both games. This is a similar situation and a place we have been in before.”
Indeed, in the Stormers’ first season in the URC, when they won the competition, they traveled to Scarlets, their only game to be played in Llanelli to date, needing a win to clinch both the Shield and a top four finish.
They managed it with a Ruhan Nel try off the last move of the game. While it was a long time ago now, Fourie said it was a good memory and he said Parc Y Scarlets “is a nice stadium to play at.”