Admittedly the words were put in his mouth by the question but DHL Stormers forwards coach Rito Hlungwani nonetheless acknowledged before the squad departed for Dublin what is needed to win their Vodacom URC semifinal - the Cape side needs to play the perfect game.
That was after he’d just spoken about the need to have discipline on point so Leinster don’t get a free pass when it comes to 22 entries, something that they have managed fairly well, even in their loss to the Bordeaux-Begles in the Investec Champions Cup final in Bilbao. It was Leinster’s finishing in that game, not discounting of course Bordeaux’s outstanding, passionate defence on their own line, that condemned the Irish unit to their fourth European final defeat in the space of five years.
The question about the perfect game followed naturally on from that as the Stormers, while perfection is a hard goal to chase, have been close to it in many other areas during the course of the season. There are not many teams that can challenge their scrum and with the exception of the first game against the Hollywoodbets Sharks their lineout has been mostly on point. Until they went walkabout on the unfamiliar 4G pitches they had to play their last two league games on, they topped the defensive stats too. Their contestable kicking game has generally been better than most.
NEAR THE TOP AT 22 ENTRIES BUT NOT CAPITALISING ON IT
There’s one area where the Stormers have been glaringly poor, however, and that has been their finishing off of scoring opportunities and capitalising on 22 entries. While they finished the league phase in the top two when it came to the number of entries, they were near the bottom in terms of conversion rate.
As their captain last week in the 44-21 quarterfinal win over Cardiff, Ruhan Nel, rightly pointed out, it is a positive when you are creating the kind of scoring opportunities that the Stormers are missing out on. It is not a positive that in virtually every game there are so many chances you can identify that weren’t taken.
The trend was arguably set in their opening game - which was ironically against Leinster in Cape Town last September. The Stormers did win 35-0, but in the first half of that clash they didn’t convert their dominance and were held to just a 6-0 lead, courtesy of two Jurie Matthee penalties, at halftime.
APPLYING SLOW POISON HAS BECOME AN EXPECTATION
Another trend that has become a narrative for the Stormers also started in that game - that being the application of slow poison, or in the old parlance it would have been subdue and penetrate. In other words the physical advantage, the scrumming superiority and the energy sapped from the opposition defence when the Stormers forwards go direct, eventually just wears the opposing team down and they collapse in a heap.
It most memorably happened against Munster, who built up a strong lead at halftime of their game in Limerick back in October but then just disintegrated in the second half. Ditto when Benetton were the opponents in Treviso, and the Stormers won the physical arm-wrestle before putting points on the board in both derbies against the Vodacom Bulls, this last weekend’s game against Cardiff and also in their opening Investec Champions Cup game away against Bayonne.
But while in the the home game against the Bulls and the first half of the game in Pretoria it is hard to recall Stormers getting chances they did not take, and they left their winning try very late in the Cape Town game in a match where both defences were physical and strong, generally there have been too many times where the Stormers have been held up over the line or missed gilt-edged scoring opportunities.
“WE SHOULD HAVE PUT THEM AWAY IN THE FIRST HALF”
“We should have put them away in the first half,” was what Stormers director of rugby John Dobson said after the win over Cardiff that was at times more nervy than it needed to be, and he was right. After an initial fronting from Cardiff, the Stormers were completely physically and territorially dominant, but it was only in the last minutes of the half, when Cardiff were reduced to 14 men, that they really took control of the game on the scoreboard.
What Dobson was saying though was that they could have had more control, and it was a game where there were again numerous times when the Stormers were held up over the line. It wasn’t the first time this season, not by a long shot, and the second half of the game against the Fidelity SecureDrive Lions at Ellis Park, when the Stormers were chasing the game but appeared to have attained a complete physical ascendancy, saw so many hold ups on the line and so many wasted scoring opportunities it was almost comical.
MISS OPPORTUNITIES AND LEINSTER WILL PUNISH YOU
Frustration was what the Stormers would have felt rather than amused, and that is what they will feel if the pattern is repeated against a Leinster team that has arguably suffered from the same problem as the Stormers in some of their really big games.
While the Leinster defence coach Jacques Nienaber has been pilloried by some sections of the Irish media, former Ireland and British and Irish Lions lock Doncha O’Callaghan came to the South African’s defence on The Offload podcast: “They are all pointing fingers at Jacques, but that’s not where the problem is”.
The DHL Stormers have a tough mission 😅
— SuperSport Rugby (@SSRugby) June 2, 2026
They've never won away at Leinster so if they are to make the final, Dobbo's men must rewrite history 📖#SSRugby | #VURC pic.twitter.com/voSW7hbyn5
He went on to accuse Leinster’s attack of lacking its old creativity, something you’d hesitate to say about the Stormers as for part of this season they were criticised for neglecting the strengths that had won them games overseas by being too flash in an attempt to be creative at home.
Nonetheless, O’Callaghan has a point about Leinster that could also be made about the Stormers, and certainly the last 73 minutes of the final league game against Cardiff, where Cardiff won 22-16 despite being completely destroyed in the scrums, was a bit of an eye-opener in terms of how impossible it appeared to be to break down the Cardiff defence.
ULSTER GAME ANOTHER CASE IN POINT
While the Stormers never fired a shot in that game, you wouldn’t have said the same about their previous week’s encounter against Ulster, where they drew the game but should really have won it were it not for the apparent while-line fever that prevented them from converting several scoring opportunities.
Leinster do convert a lot better when they aren’t playing a team of the calibre of Bordeaux and the Lions will tell you after their two visits to Dublin in recent weeks that if you don’t take an opportunity against Leinster - and admittedly the one that is most remembered was the try that was denied by the match officials in the league game - you can take poison they will punish you for it.
So the Stormers are going to have to be far more clinical when scoring opportunities come than they were on their last visit to Ireland if they are to have any chance of scoring the upset win that will set up a place in the competition decider. In short, their chances do hinge on them playing the perfect game.