After they shipped 10 tries across their final two games of the league phase of the Vodacom URC season the DHL Stormers’ defence was an obvious focus when director of rugby John Dobson faced the media at the start of the buildup week to Saturday’s quarterfinal in Cape Town.
While the Stormers don’t want to make too much of the role the two 4G surfaces in Belfast and Cardiff played in their failure to reach their tour objective of nailing down the top spot on the log, it is clear that their unfamiliarity with 4G and their ongoing struggle to be comfortable on it remains a massive issue.
And while this week’s game will see the Stormers seek revenge against Cardiff on the grassy surface at DHL Stadium they are far more familiar with, Dobson agrees that it is something that needs to be addressed.
“We made a big thing of turning around our overseas form this season and we achieved that. Our loss to Cardiff was the first time we lost overseas in the URC this season,” said Dobson.
“But our performances on 4G pitches haven’t been good and we do struggle there. We are not playing on a 4G pitch again this season but we are playing on 4G pitches again this year as we face Connacht and Edinburgh in our first two matches next year, both of those games will be on 4G pitches.”
ADJUSTMENTS NEEDED ON ATTACK NEXT TIME THEY ARE ON 4G
Dobson agreed that it is not just their defence that needs sorting on a surface where possession more easily leads to momentum than on a grass surface and you can sometimes be committed to all out defence for several minutes after you’ve lost the ball, but also the way the team attacks. He agreed that Cardiff in particular employed an excellent attacking game with their dense attack formula built around short passing and excellent support play coupled with direct running.
“Cardiff were very impressive and what they troubled us with was their body height when they carried the ball, on that surface their low posture was very difficult to stop and it is something we need to learn from before we go back to 4G surfaces later in the year,” said Dobson.
THEY KNOW WHAT NEEDS FIXING
The more immediate priority is obviously reversing the result of the Cardiff Arms Park match on the grass of Cape Town and while Cardiff won’t have the advantages they have on 4G, Dobson says his team learned enough in the game and are conversant enough with the trends of the season so far to know what needs fixing.
The anticipated return of Ruhan Nel to the outside centre channel and probably also to the captaincy should go some way towards sorting out the defensive issues of Cardiff and indeed the week before that in Ulster, but Dobson doesn’t believe the failures last time out were just down to the players in the wide channels.
“I think we lacked line speed and tackle dominance closer to the breakdown and that made it harder for the guys out wide,” he said.
“Cardiff’s recycle speed was incredibly quick and once they get on top of you with those short passes you’re in trouble. It’s definitely a flashpoint for us and one we are acutely aware of.”
NEED TO CAPITALISE ON 22 ENTRIES
But it is far from the only Stormers flashpoint and work on ahead of Saturday and it is clear Dobson and his team have spent some time since the Cardiff game reflecting on the league season as a whole.
“We beat the Bulls in Cape Town in early January (to retain our unbeaten record in the season) but then I would agree we became very inconsistent after that,” Dobson admitted.
“But we do have a good idea of what needs improving and we are all aligned on that. I think people will grant that there was a humanity aspect around the loss to Connacht (following the sudden and untimely death of team manager Chippie Solomon) and that is not a week anyone in this squad would like to repeat.
“If you look at the stats of our games and the season so far it does tell a story. We are second best in the competition when it comes to entries into the opposition 22, but our conversion rate is way down and not nearly good enough. Our set piece is top in all aspects and when it comes to defence we have the least tries conceded.
“So we obviously need to sort out that conversion rate and capitalise on our field position. That our set piece is working so well is a big plus, but the two games against the Sharks which we lost, particularly the one in Cape Town, were odd in the sense that our lineouts collapsed. We went from nearly 100 per cent to 60 per cent.
“We have a lot of consistency around the set piece and we are very good around our fundamentals, both around our set piece and kicking game. However recently we haven’t got enough kick metres and we also need to put the opposition lineout under more pressure.”
SENATLA’S STRIKE POWER MAY MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Overall though what will disturb Dobson heading into the return game against Cardiff this weekend was how they struggled to land any shots on their Welsh opponents after the first seven minutes of dominance when they scored their only try. In many ways it was reminiscent of another game they lost, the away clash with the Lions, a game where in the second half the Stormers were physically superior and camped on the Lions’ try line but just couldn’t score.
The expected return on the wing of the pacy Seabelo Senatla will bring some of the missing strike-power out wide but a return to the more patient attack, not to mention also more disciplined because the Stormers did give away way too many silly penalties with infractions in attacking and even scoring positions overseas, of the win over Glasgow is the key to their playoff chances.