There were 11 points in it at the final whistle but if you watch the game again, it should confirm that the Vodacom URC coastal derby in Cape Town last week was one of fine margins which with just a bit more luck could have seen the DHL Stormers secure their 12th win of the season.
As skipper for the day, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu said afterwards, it was a positive that his team managed to set up 22 entries as often as they did. There were also arguably some questionable calls at scrum time against the Stormers replacement loose-head Vernon Matongo just as the Stormers’ impact squad seemed to be wrestling physical control their way.
Yet had the Stormers got home instead of losing 30-19 to the Hollywoodbets Sharks, it would have gone down as another win where, to be brutally honest, they were a long way short of playing well. Something they’ve made a trend of this season after returning from an unprecedentedly successful overseas phase that included four URC wins and one in the Investec Champions Cup across October and the end of November.
The Stormers only had themselves to blame for wasting their attacking opportunities in the Sharks' 22, and while maybe those scrum penalties should have gone the Stormers’ way rather than to the Sharks, what is the point of getting penalties if you are not going to win the resultant lineout?
Maybe it was the acknowledgement that faults easily get glossed over when you win that the Stormers’ Springbok blindside flank Ben-Jason Dixon seemed very eager to get in a point during an online press conference in the buildup to the return coastal derby in Durban on Saturday.
“I just wanted to say that the way the Sharks played in that game did us a favour,” said Dixon as he veered away from the essential topic of a question he had been asked just after forwards coach Rito Hlungwani had been speaking, as he always does, about how the main Stormers’ mission is to make weekly improvements.
“As Rito said, the aim is to improve each week. But it is different if someone beats you, and beats you in a certain department. That adds a level of desperation,” he explained.
COPY AND PASTE FROM PREVIOUS PERFORMANCES
Indeed, while the lineout horrors were a little unexpected, there were many aspects of the Stormers’ performance that were a copy and paste from previous home games. Such as a really soft start. When the Sharks went ahead 5-0 after just a few minutes, it was a repeat of what happened against the Lions in December, as it was when they were up 14-5 shortly after that.
The Stormers, instead of starting in rousing fashion, have tended to start in their DHL Stadium games looking a little lazy, and there were four errors in the short time it took the Sharks to build up to their first try. In the Lions game, it was a similar story, with repeat mistakes being made in the left corner from kick-off, something that happened again in the most recent game.
In the Lions game it was possible to speculate that the sun was shining into the Stormers players’ eyes as it was an early mid-afternoon kick-off and the sun was glaring down, but the most recent game kicked off in the evening when the sun wasn’t a factor when Leolin Zas ended up in touch from the kickoff to give the Sharks an immediate 22 entry.
Even in the Vodacom Bulls derby, where the Stormers won by five points, they had to deal with conceding the first points. Against Leicester Tigers in the Champions Cup the Stormers scored the first two tries, but then came the errors and poor decisions that allowed the visitors to quickly overturn a 12-0 lead and actually go ahead 14-12.
They won, so the warning bells were ignored. Or at least they were if you look at the repeat mistakes of the Sharks game. As Dixon says, now that the team has actually lost, and the failings have been exploited by an opposition team - and he certainly wasn’t suggesting the Sharks didn’t play well and didn’t deserve to win - there’s the chance for a proper reality check. Or to put it a different way, a reality check has been forced.
Regardless of what happens in Durban on Saturday, the Stormers will still be in a prime position on the log. And if they do lose, they will have a break in games in which to do some soul searching and correct the game issues that have started to raise themselves since the side returned from overseas.
But the Hollywoodbets Kings Park game will be an important one for the Stormers in the sense that it will be a test of their self-belief, and getting things right will re-establish any confidence that might have been lost at the hands of the supremely motivated Sharks.
“This is a chance to fix things, things that we saw in the review, such as the lineouts,” said Dixon.
“There were also a few maul tries they scored against them. These are areas we believe we can be competitive in and even dominate and beat them. There were also some positives out of the game, such as an improved defensive effort. We were well beaten but we were also not too far off. There is lots to work on, and we know it after losing that game.”