The DHL Stormers threw everything into a passionate effort that came so close to making them heroes, but in the end they will be kicking themselves for the moment of madness that enabled Leinster to clinch a 20-11 victory in their Vodacom URC semifinal in Dublin on Saturday.
Don’t be fooled by that nine-point gap if you didn’t watch the game. It was 13-11 with 12 minutes to go when the visiting replacement loose-forward Ruan Ackermann clattered dangerously into a clean-out with the Stormers on the attack deep in the Leinster half. Up to that point, after weathering a ferocious Leinster storm in the opening 20 minutes, the Stormers were succeeding in turning the game into the arm-wrestle it needed to be for them to stand a chance.
Referee Hollie Davidson showed Ackermann a yellow card and referred it to the bunker. There could be no complaint from the Stormers when it was upgraded - it definitely was a clear red, with Ackermann making contact with a Leinster player’s head with his reckless dive into the loose scrum, and many of us watching probably called it before Davidson, with the help of the TMO, called play to a halt to wave the initial yellow.
NOT A REFEREEING PERFORMANCE DAVIDSON SHOULD BE PROUD OF
If that was a fair call, and the upgrading to a red was also fair, what happened next was not. If anything, the Stormers lock Salmaan Moerat’s raising of his leg when prone on the ground facilitated the break near the recycle that Jamison Gibson-Park made to set up the match-clinching try with 10 minutes to go.
It was hard to tell what else Moerat could have done and it was an appalling call from Davidson. It wasn’t the only one. Her poor refereeing performance in the league game at Dublin involving the SecureDrive Lions got me thinking she might be a bit overawed in games involving Irish teams in front of Irish audiences, and that feeling was accentuated in this game.
It is always a big thing to suggest that a referee appears to be only blowing for one side, but certainly this was a day when the 50/50 calls appeared to roll 70/30 in favour of the hosts. As if visiting teams don’t already have enough of a mountain to climb when they play an international-class Leinster in front of their home fans at the AVIVA Stadium.
DEFENCE WAS OUTSTANDING
In the end the Stormers should be proud of many things after this game, the most obvious being their defence, which was heroic throughout and with 15 minutes to go. With the Stormers suddenly looking like the team with more energy, it looked like it may be rewarded. And they did in a game where they effectively had three cards shown to them, as Leolin Zas was shown a yellow for a tap down early in the second half.
There won’t be complaints about that call, but those incidents always carry an element of bad luck as you could understand why, in the moment Zas saw it as an intercept opportunity. The Stormers were 13-8 down at the time, which was also the halftime score, and it looked like that might be a game-changing moment.
Instead, the Stormers were brilliant in managing the period when they were down to 14 men playing against 15, and actually won that 10 minutes as a scrum penalty set up Jurie Matthee’s second three-pointer of the game and took the Stormers to within two points of their opponents. And that was the way it stayed until Ackermann’s moment of madness, which apart from reducing the Stormers to 14 men, also conceded the penalty with which Leinster set up the field position from which Gibson-Park scored.
Given how they fought in the last 10 minutes when they were 13 against 15, they might well have done something special with 14, it was just that kind of day for the Stormers. Their withstanding of the pressure and then the way they fought to get some kind of physical ascendancy, forcing Leinster into error with their big tackles, even though Leinster always dominated possession, was phenomenal.
WILLEMSE WAS PHENOMENAL
Also phenomenal was the Stormers fullback, Damian Willemse, who was outstanding in the aerial battle and also in his attacking plays when the chaos that the contestable kicks are designed to create ensued. Willemse was here, there and everywhere and Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus should be breathing a sigh of relief that he got through the game unscathed as he is going to be an important player for the Springboks in the coming weeks and months.
Had the Stormers won the game he, and not Gibson-Park, would surely have walked off with the official man of the match award and no-one in Ireland would have complained.
Leinster started the game strongly, as they were always expected to, and after 13 minutes the stats showed that they’d enjoyed 85 per cent of the possession and 84 per cent of the territory. The Stormers’ defensive line speed was impressive then and throughout the game, but Leinster did manage to move the ball wide to All Black star Rieko Ioane who ran through for a converted try. A few minutes later Sam Prendergast added a penalty to make it 10-0 and the Stormers were up against it.
That was even more the case when Prendergast stretched the hosts into a 13-0 lead after 22 minutes. At that point, the Stormers had made well into the thirties when it came to tackles while Leinster had been forced to make fewer than five. But then came a momentum shift in the third quarter, with the Stormers setting and appearing to rattle Leinster physically.
MOMENTUM SHIFT AS GAME BECAME AN ARM WRESTLE
From then on, it became an arm wrestle, with Adre Smith driving over for a try that cut the deficit to eight points and then came a penalty from Matthee, who also had a good game and certainly didn’t let his team down in the absence of Springbok maestro Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu.
Leinster produced a concerted siege on the Stormers' line in the final minutes of the half, but heroic, and yes that word can’t be used often enough, defence repelled their intent and would have been looked back at as a pivotal period of the game had the Stormers got across the line as winners. They so nearly did, but instead Leinster will host the Vodacom Bulls in the final two weeks hence.
Their fellow South African team should feel the Stormers showed them how to beat Leinster. And the Stormers should feel that, given they came so close without Feinberg-Mngomezulu, Cobus Reinach, JD Schickerling, Ruben van Heerden and Seabelo Senatla, and with players off to cards for significant parts of the second half, that even in defeat they experienced growth. Next time they go to AVIVA they won’t be such rank underdogs.
SCORES
Leinster 20 - Tries: Rieko Ioane and Jamison Gibson-Park; Conversions: Sam Prendergast 2; Penalties: Sam Prendergast 2.
DHL Stormers 11 - Try: Adre Smith; Penalties: Jurie Matthee 2.