Forwards coach Rito Hlungwani said on the eve of what the DHL Stormers will hope to be their final overseas tour of the season that the Cape team will be fuelled by the desperation of not wanting to return home having relinquished their current top position on the Vodacom URC log.
The Stormers have set themselves the task of winning both their remaining league games against Ulster in Belfast on Friday night and then Cardiff exactly seven days later. To do so will give them a good chance of securing pole position for the play-offs, although if Glasgow Warriors, currently one point behind them, also win both their remaining games bonus points could come into the equation.
Top spot would mean the Stormers won’t have to travel at all regardless of how deep they go int the playoff phase, which is quite a carrot for a team that won this competition in its inaugural season but has never finished first in the league stage. The problem is that they don’t have a good record at either the Kingspan Stadium where they play on Friday or at Cardiff Arms Park.
HAVE BECOME MORE ACCUSTOMED TO 4G
Should they get across the line as winners on Friday against the EPCR Challenge Cup finalists,it will be the first time they’ve won at that venue. It will also be a rare win for the Stormers on a 4G pitch, a surface they have struggled on in the past.
On both counts though Hlungwani is confident, and he points to the several frontiers that the Stormers have crossed in overseas matches this season as justification for going into the Kingspan game with some hope.
“Our mindset for this game will be very similar to the one we took onto the field against Munster earlier in the season,” said Hlungwani.
“I know we are playing on a different type of pitch, but we had never won there (Thomond Park) before and we won that game. We had also never won in Treviso, and we won there. Our preparation is very different for this kind of game than it has been in the past and it really does make a difference.
“The game model has evolved for overseas games. It is different on 4G, and we don’t have a good record on 4G pitches, but we have played on them often enough now and are getting more used to them.”
LAST YEAR’S WIN OVER STADE FRANCAIS WAS A BREAKTHROUGH
None of the five consecutive wins (four URC games and one Investec Champions Cup) that the Stormers won in October through to the end of November was achieved on a 4G pitch but they do have some positive memories now on a surface where for a while they had never won.
“I think the last win we had on 4G (in the URC) was against Connacht away (2024) but we drew with Edinburgh (in the first season of the URC) and we have also come close against Ulster before,” said the Stormers forwards coach.
“We have also won (on 4G) against Stade Francais (in the Champions Cup in 2025). Probably the biggest one was Stade Francais. We see our previous performances on 4G pitches as an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to pick up experience of those surfaces, and we are getting more used to them and starting to deal with them better.
“I think the overall experience of playing on those surfaces has helped us and we will be nicely prepared for this one coming up,” he added.
BYE WEEK WAS PERFECTLY TIMED
One thing the Stormers won’t be doing this time in Belfast is training too much on the 4G and in that sense it has suited the Stormers that last week was a bye week as they got most of their preparation for the game done then.
“Last time when we went to Ulster’s home ground we realised we mustn’t spend too much time training on that surface as it takes a long time to recover. It is why we have put in a lot of training at home.
"We know what to expect so we have put in a lot of time doing what we know is necessary on that surface, like getting our tackle height right and getting the right position in the mauls and the scrums.
“The week we spent preparing last week and the training we have done today (Monday) has been great for us, it has helped that we head there after a bye week. It means we can get there feeling full prepared and with most of the work done already.”
Travelling to the northern hemisphere at this time of the year is also less of a shock on the body than it is when going from South Africa’s mid-summer to the northern hemisphere’s mid-winter in January.
“It does make a huge difference. It has been cold and a bit wet in Cape Town and no-one likes going to a place like Ulster when it is mid-winter and cold.
"Although it is moving onto summer there and we are heading into winter, the conditions won’t be that much different there to what they are here at the moment so there’s no massive acclimatisation needed (like there would be in December through to February).”