THE SAME MOVIE WAS AN IMPROVED ONE FOR STORMERS FANS
There’s that old saying that the first sign of madness is… I am not going to complete that as it would offend readers, for just about everyone was saying before last week’s north/south derby that the Stormers had no chance.
Even on Stormers press conferences post that game questions have been prefaced with statements like “No-one thought you had a chance”. Which is patent nonsense, although I know I don’t have much company in thinking that.
The reality is that while the Bulls did go into the Loftus game as the form team, what transpired was a movie that we have seen countless times before.Just like Scotland’s excellent recent record against England in the Six Nations, and for that matter Ireland’s even better record against the Scots, which now reads 12 successive wins, there has to be a reason for it.
Here are the facts of the Stormers’ dominance of the Bulls in the Vodacom URC era - there have been 12 games, including one final and one quarterfinal, and the Stormers have won 10 of them. Most of those games have been closer than the one we saw at Loftus last weekend, which is a reason Stormers fans have now watched an improved version of the same movie, but in terms of results, the Stormers have dominated.
Indeed, speaking of the close games between the teams, it could be argued that the record of 10 wins in 12 starts is much closer to 11 wins in 12 starts than it is to nine or eight, for the closest game of all saw the Bulls decidedly lucky to win.
The game in question was last January, when the Bulls scored their only URC win in Cape Town, when the Stormers scored what should have been a late winning try only for Clayton Blommetjies to miss the match-winning conversion from in front of the posts.
The Bulls have won only one other game, the breakthrough win at Loftus three seasons, and that was pretty emphatic, but otherwise even in Pretoria the north/south derby has been a nightmare sequence for the Bulls - just one win in five games. In other words an 80 per cent success rate for the Stormers.
THERE JUST ISN’T THE GAP THAT SOME THINK THERE IS
Okay, so I said there must be a reason why the Stormers do well against the Bulls so I must try and search for one, apart from the obvious which is that they get up for north/south games, and here is one of them - the perception that the Bulls are a much stronger team than the Stormers is a myth.
The Lions can still usurp the Stormers’ position as the leading SA team on the current log, just as the Bulls could come to Cape Town later in the season and win a quarterfinal. I am not saying the Stormers are an emphatically better team than the Bulls, just challenging the assumption of a chasm between the sides in favour of the Pretoria team that prompts so many to make them such big favourites before every north/south derby.
There really hasn't been much between the two top performing SA franchises in the URC era. In four completed seasons, the Stormers have finished ahead of the Bulls twice, the Bulls have finished ahead of the Stormers twice.
Right now it looks like the Stormers will finish higher than the Bulls in this campaign, but they have both been consistently competitive - the Stormers have won the competition once and played in two finals, the Bulls have yet to win the competition but have played in one more final than the Stormers.
The Stormers have never finished lower than fifth, the Bulls have never finished lower than sixth - and I expect that to remain the case this year even though the Bulls are currently eighth.
IMPRESSIVE CONTINUITY FROM CAPE SIDE
There’s more that goes into being successful as a rugby entity than having star players. Much revolves around succession planning, culture and team work, and there is something about the Stormers that does make them different to the other three local sides that have finished in the top four of the URC, the other side being the Sharks - their continuity.
The Bulls have gone through one change of coach since the URC era started. The Sharks have gone through three if you factor in Neil Powell’s interim stint as head coach. JP Pietersen is effectively their fourth coach in five years.
By contrast, the Stormers have the same head coach/director of rugby in John Dobson, the same forwards coach, the same attack coach, the same defence coach… Although Dobson’s succession planning is bleeding promising new players into the system, there’s also been impressive continuity within the playing group.
Players in this last Loftus game that were part of the successful inaugural URC season of 2021/2022, in other words got winners medals and tasted what it is like to win the trophy, included fullback Warrick Gelant, wing Leolin Zas (although he was injured for that final), the centres Damian Willemse and Ruhan Nel, flankers Deon Fourie and Ben-Jason Dixon, lock Adre Smith, stalwart prop Neethling Fouche (although he played behind Frans Malherbe that year) and hooker Andre-Hugo Venter.
Marcel Theunissen, who excelled at No 8 at Loftus, played behind Evan Roos that season but still got a few games in. Roos missed the most recent Loftus game because of injury but will be back shortly.
Add to that players who played off the bench in Pretoria who also played in that first winning season - Hacjivah Dayimani, who started in the 2022 final and is now back from his stint in France, tighthead Sazi Sandi, who I remember being one of the heroes of the first Stormers URC win at Loftus, and reserve hooker JJ Kotze, who was in the starting front row in the 2022 final.
Manie Libbok played flyhalf for the Stormers in that first season and is now in Japan but the man who is wearing the No 10 now, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, is hardly a downgrade and it was that season Sacha was introduced - as an emergency outside centre, a position he had never played before, in a playoff game following a late injury to Ruhan Nel.
So Sacha was part of the ‘Class of 2022’ and we also can’t ignore Salmaan Moerat, the club captain who is currently injured but still very much part of the Stormers squad, and of course Roos and Dan du Plessis. Seabelo Senatla, not at Loftus but ready to play again after injury, was another member of the URC winning team.
I am not sure the other franchises have as much similarity in their current match day squads with the squads of the first year of the URC. My point being that the Stormers do still have a core of decorated URC winners playing for them, and they are playing for the same coach who drove them to their initial success. And when it comes to matches against the Bulls - well, they have plenty of experience of winning those…
RUHAN’S RETURN WAS CRUCIAL
So why the blip in the games against the Sharks (twice) and the Lions then? Well, at halftime of the first game against the Sharks Ruhan Nel, who’d been watching the game from near the press box, was hailed by a colleague as he made his way past us.
I won’t repeat everything the then injured centre said, for it wasn’t an interview, but let’s just say he felt what he was watching was something he’d warned against in the week building up, namely complacency, and in terms of the game the Stormers were playing and the mistakes being made, he was watching the same game I was.
It was because Nel was expected back for the Kings Park game that my prediction was a Stormers win in that return match seven days later. Unfortunately for the Stormers he was still not in the team announced on the eve of the game, and neither for the most recent defeat against the Lions.
When the Stormers team for Loftus was named on the eve of the game, and not only was Nel in it but also another strong leadership figure in Deon Fourie, I wished I could go back to my preview penned earlier in the day. To my mind that took the Stormers from having a chance of victory to having an excellent chance.
Sure enough, unlike in so many other Stormers games between the beginning of December through to February, they stuck to script and went back to the basics that earned them victory under Nel’s captaincy in the first part of the season.
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE BULLS?
I could answer that question with one word. Nothing. I won't because there were times in the first half in particular when it looked like they were back in the mindset that they were in when it looked like their new coach Johan Ackermann was trying to morph them into being the Lions team he coached in his previous franchise job in South Africa.
The reality though is that Norman Laker, the Stormers defence coach, has it right - he explained the Stormers blip by saying that there are too many good teams in the URC to expect to go through a season unbeaten. And as outlined above, the Stormers are a good team.
The Bulls have generally corrected their game since their long sequence of defeats and given how good the Stormers forwards were once they got momentum, the Bulls might have lost the game regardless of what alterations they could have made to their game-plan.
What separates the Stormers at the moment from the Bulls, and for that matter the Sharks, is that they built up credit in the bank in the early part of the season whereas those teams didn’t.
That’s why the Stormers were able to go through a sequence of three defeats and still be second on the log, whereas those other teams are struggling to make the top eight.
A BIG PERIOD COMING FOR JP
This coming sequence of home games is going to be a defining point of the season for the Bulls and Lions, with the Lions needing to rid themselves of their reputation for tripping up later in their campaign against teams they should beat.
Glasgow Warriors are due to come to Ellis Park and they will be tough opponents, but the Lions have beaten them in Johannesburg before while the other three games they play at home they should win. If they drop one of the games against Edinburgh this week, Dragons the following or Connacht in April, then they have failed themselves.
Ditto the Bulls in their home run at Loftus, although they do have tougher opponents to play in the form of Munster and Cardiff, both of whom are currently in the URC top six. The Bulls have lost to Munster in Pretoria in the not too distant past. As said already, the URC does have good teams playing in it. But I will have to change my view there isn't much wrong at Loftus if they do lose more games at a venue that is no longer an impregnable fortress.
The team really under pressure in the next fortnight is the Sharks, as is their coach JP Pietersen. The Sharks have tended to do well in the derby phase of the competition before, certainly last year when they won the SA Shield, and I can remember writing after their wins against the Stormers that the return to clashes against overseas teams will be the litmus test for what was then considered a revival.
As it turned out, we didn’t have to wait for Saturday’s game against Munster for the pressure to return. The week that Pietersen was appointed as permanent head coach they lost comprehensively to the Lions, and then got even more emphatically outplayed by the Bulls.
In Pietersen’s defence he is having to make up ground that the Sharks gave away earlier in the season under a different coach, but the positivity around his appointment is going to be put to a proper test if the Sharks fail to make the top eight and qualify for the playoffs and the Champions Cup.
Hopefully the Sharks will be back at full strength for the Munster game - they weren’t in Johannesburg or Pretoria - because a statement needs to be made. The Sharks can’t continue to dine out on two good wins in derbies against the Stormers where, like Scotland against England and the Stormers against the Bulls, they always bring a bit of extra motivation and edge.
MY MONEY SAYS THE WORKAHOLIC WILL GET IT RIGHT
So hopefully my unashamedly clickbait headline has kept you engaged up to this last entry. Sacha delivered a tactical kicking masterclass at Loftus. Not that there should ever have been any debate about him being the No 1 choice Bok flyhalf, ahead of his direct opponent on the day, Handre Pollard, but if there was, he ended it.
If Sacha is not already the best flyhalf in the world, he will be. Him being contracted to the Stormers until 2029 is why I expect the Cape team to challenge for the ultimate club prize, that being the Champions Cup, in a couple of years. At Loftus he confirmed the view of the Bok attack coach Tony Brown - he will be okay if he realises he doesn’t have to do everything on his own.
However, watching England lose in agonising fashion to France in the Six Nations finale prolonged a concern that started to gnaw when Sacha missed some kicks at posts earlier in the day. England scored seven tries to six against France in Paris. Had Fin Baxter not produced a bit of a goalkicking shower in comparison with France’s Thomas Ramos, England would not have been in a position where they could lose to that late Ramos penalty.
In the fine margins of a World Cup knock-out game, it may well come down to kicks. Given how Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s international career started, with a calmly taken long penalty just after coming onto the field in a game against Wales, it feels weird that Sacha’s kicking is under question.
I’ve seen him kick like a metronome and until relatively recently he was considered more reliable than Manie Libbok. That’s changed though, and not only because Libbok has improved.
What you can be certain of is that the player will be working really hard on his place-kicking. His schools coach Wes Chetty spoke to me last year about his work ethic, his constant quest for perfection and how he spent so many hours kicking at the posts - in the late evenings and early mornings when his teammates were asleep or otherwise engaged. So my money says the workaholic will get it right.
Funnily enough, given some of the monster kicks he has landed in some games, including in the losses to the Sharks and the Lions, I would have backed him to succeed where Ramos did with that clutch kick against England. There's nothing wrong with his boot or his temperament.