Stormers’ opponents driven to prove super computer wrong

The Sale Sharks team that faces the DHL Stormers in a third round Investec Champions Cup game on Saturday will not be lacking in motivation in a season where they are being driven by something similar to what inspired the Cape team to the Vodacom URC title in 2022.

It was the sense that they had been written off by everyone that motivated what coach John Dobson, in deference to the critics and their expectations, described as a “small team” in the season they won the inaugural URC title.

Although an unexpected defeat to Gloucester last weekend dropped them to sixth on the Gallagher Premiership log, three down from the third position they occupied at New Year, with a fourth place being enough to play in the playoffs, Sale have been doing much better than the pundits were predicting at the start of the season.

Sale director of rugby Alex Sanderson told the English media that his team’s good form had been prompted by what he and his team saw as a lack of respect - both from humans and a “super computer”.

The reference to a super computer was Sanderson’s response to a piece of data analysis published by Premiership Rugby last month that gave Sale just a nine per cent chance of finishing in the top four. Sanderson has made no attempt to hide his contempt for that analysis and says it has been a big motivation for his team and will continue to be so for the rest of the season.

“We have used that to fuel us. In the midpoint (of the season) you can look at the league and say there are the teams that are in the running. Not five weeks ago. I am still pissed off about it,” Sanderson was quoted as saying by The Times.

“I just don’t think we are rated and I don’t understand why. We have been in the semifinals year in and year out, barring just one year in the last four, and in a final. Maybe it is because we are not the most flashy or fashionable. You tell me.”

RESPONDING WITH RESULTS

Sale’s response was to beat Leicester Tigers and Exeter Chiefs in the Premiership and they also took apart Racing 92 in the Champions Cup. Then they smashed Bristol Bears 38-0 in what some critics described as the Premiership performance of the season.

All of which means that, the Gloucester reverse aside, the Sharks are coming to Cape Town with impressive momentum and supremely motivated to continue proving both the super computer and the critics wrong.

“Sod you, super computer,” Sanderson was quoted as saying after the win over Exeter and he continued on that line after the Bristol game.

“You guys (the media) are experts and you are asking me if it came as a surprise,” he said. “No, it didn’t come as a surprise. Look at form, look at the team. They are a great bunch of lads, they work really hard and they play some great rugby, but it is never written about in favourable terms.”

The defeat to Gloucester would have been accompanied by a media backlash, which may just further motivate Sale, and a warning to the Stormers came in the form of this statement made after the whitewashing of Bristol: “I have said to the players, ‘We are not done making statements and proving points, we are nowhere near done yet’.”

Until recently the English teams had a poor record in South Africa in the Champions Cup, but Northampton Saints, who are four points and a couple of positions behind the Sharks on the Gallagher league table, changed all of that when they beat the Vodacom Bulls in Pretoria in December.

The Stormers beat the Manchester based Sharks in a match that was ironically played at the same venue and on the same weekend last season but it does appear that there’s anger and a strong desire to prove people wrong fuelling the Sale challenge this time around.

And the win over Racing has given them a good chance of qualifying for the round of 16 and with a favourable draw, so there will be no room for any kind of complacency in a Stormers camp that has yet to so much as even pick up a losing bonus point in this edition of the competition.