No love lost between Friday’s Belfast protagonists

The Vodacom United Rugby Championship is still new enough to work against there being enough history to start intense rivalries between South African teams and their northern opponent, but the DHL Stormers and Ulster are an exception.

When the Stormers and Ulster meet at the Kingspan Stadium in Belfast on Friday night it will be the continuation of what has already become a storied rivalry between the two teams that began with a hotly contested game between the sides in Cape Town in early April 2022.

If anyone needs a memory jolt, the Stormers started like a house on fire and scored two early tries. Then Ulster came back at them. And the Stormers were let off the hook right at the end when a refereeing error cost Ulster what would have been the winning score.

There’s nothing unusual about that, and the Stormers have often been on the other side of such questionable decision-making by the match officials. But the then Ulster coach Dan McFarland kept it in everyone’s minds by talking about it for weeks afterwards.

Even Vodacom Bulls coach Jake White brought it up in the buildup to his team’s clash in the URC final when he opined that the Stormers might not have been there had it not been for that refereeing decision.

The Stormers were in that final, which they won, courtesy of a nail-biting win over the self-same Ulster in the DHL Stadium semifinal. Ulster dominated most of the game, well at least the first hour, but then the Stormers came back at them in the last quarter and a Warrick Gelant try in the left corner brought the teams level.

Manie Libbok had experienced one of those iffish afternoons he sometimes goes through with the boot so it looked like extra time was beckoning, but this one he slotted, amidst intense pressure and in front of a hushed stadium, to take the Stormers into the final.

Ulster would have hosted the Bulls in the final and would have backed themselves to win so they won’t have forgotten that loss in a hurry. The next time the two teams played the Stormers were significantly under-strength because of international calls but the other of two matches to be played between the teams at Kingspan was close, as was last year’s game in Cape Town.

WEATHERING THE STORM

In that most recent game, with visiting loosehead and the Stormers hero of that first season Steven Kitshoff playing what sadly turned out to be his last game at DHL Stadium, Ulster dominated the first half but, like was the case in the semifinal two years before that, didn’t convert their superiority into points. 

The Stormers weathered the storm and fought back to win it in the final minutes.

So what can we expect from Friday’s game? Well, what we do know is that it is an important game for both teams in their quest for a playoff spot. And it might even be more desperate for Ulster, in the sense that unlike the Stormers, who are one point ahead of them on the log, they don’t have four successive home games to look forward to after this.

For Rito Hlungwani, the Stormers forwards coach who was in that position for all the Ulster clashes down the years, one thing is certain - there will be no love lost and it will also be physical.

“They play more of a physical game than the other Irish teams and have a massive pack of forwards. It’s going to be a high-impact, high-collision type of game,” Hlungwani said.

Which is okay for the Stormers, because unlike Ulster, who are in the round of 16 in the Investec Champions Cup the following week (away against Bordeaux Begles), they have three weeks off after this. That might well be a glimmer of hope for the Stormers.

What the Stormers will want though is for Ulster to be going into that game off a defeat, and to achieve that it is critical for the visitors to be physically dominant.

“Ulster are one of those teams that work really hard to get into your 22 and when they get in, they’re very patient. They want to dominate you physically… grind, grind, grind until they get results,” said the forwards coach.

“Our boys always get excited for games like this. It’s going to be kind of a ‘gloves off’ type of a game where both packs of forwards want to show off their physicality and try and build some dominance in the game.”