The worry before the DHL Stormers took the field against the All Blacks for the opening game of the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry tour in Cape Town was that the timing was all wrong and that playing such a tough game in what should be the start of the pre-season could come at some cost.
Those misgivings proved correct, with the star young scrumhalf Imad Khan being injured earlier on and seeing him hobbling afterwards made it almost unnecessary to ask Stormers director of rugby John Dobson the question at the press conference that followed a committed performance in what ultimately became a 38-21 loss.
Immy’s got a reasonably serious knee injury,” Dobson confirmed, adding that the other scrumhalf Dewaldt Duvenage, who did well as Khan’s replacement, had sustained a broken arm, which led to the Stormers playing the last part of the game without a specialist scrumhalf on the field.
“It was Dewaldt’s last game for us so it is not a big impact on us going forward (Duvenage will now become a fulltime coach) but I was very sorry for him that his last game ended with him breaking his arm.”
Given his outstanding form that saw the 22-year-old propelled into the national squad at the end of the last URC season, the loss of Khan will be sorely felt by the Stormers if, as now expected, they start their next campaign without him. However, Dobson says he has faith in the other scrumhalves on his books as the squad nears the end of September kick-off to the URC, which starts in Galway with a tough away game against Connacht.
“We’ve got two great scrumhalves playing in the Currie Cup in Stef Ungerer and Ezekeil Ngobeni and then if we have to look, we have to look,” he said.
“You don’t expect two players to go down in one game, but at some stage Cobus (Reinach) will be back (from Springbok duty).”
Skipper Ruhan Nel went off with an injury shortly after halftime but that doesn’t seem serious and the veteran centre, who was really emotional about getting a chance to face the All Blacks and their haka at the age of 35, felt that despite the injuries there was a lot that his team gained from playing against New Zealand and their ball in hand playing style.
“It was really quick in those first 10 minutes. They shift the ball so well through their hands and they find space so easily. So the way you tackle them, if you can’t create yourself two to three seconds (of slowing them down), you’re immediately under pressure,” said Nel.
“When they get momentum you know the kick is not coming, the run is coming, so it was definitely a cut from a different cloth to what we’ve faced over the last couple of months or couple of years. I told Norman (Laker, the defence coach), ‘that’s exactly how it should be’. You need to feel like you are playing against an international team, and that is what it did feel like.
“It’s good lessons for us to learn going forward, particularly when we play teams like Leinster and Glasgow, who also base their scoring attempts off a lot of passes. We need to slow that down and this game was a great tester for us on how to do that.”