The DHL Stormers didn’t need to look very far to establish a reason why their first Investec Champions Cup opponents of the season, Bristol Bears, are to be respected and feared ahead of Saturday afternoon’s clash at the DHL Stadium.
The Stormers have of course won against the Vodacom Bulls at Loftus fairly frequently in recent years, in fact since the start of the John Dobson era as Stormers coach/director of rugby. But they know it never comes easy, and victory there is come by digging very deep, both physically and emotionally.
So Bristol’s 61-49 win over the Bulls at Loftus is an easy focus point for the Stormers. That looks like a relatively close game, but it wasn’t. The Bulls were well beaten halfway through the second half and just came back with some consolation tries towards the end. A team that scores nine tries has to have something going for it on attack, and Stormers captain Ruhan Nel, who is also the organiser of the Cape team’s defence, knows he’s up against an unpredictable opponent.
“There are good attacking teams like Leinster, but what is different about Bristol is their unpredictability,” said Nel.
“With a team like Leinster you know what they are going to do as they are structured and revolve everything around phase play and it is all about just finding a way to stop them. If you watch Bristol you see a mixture of things and they like their 20 to 30 metre passes.”
In other words there is a lot of X-factor in the visiting unit, who have one of the quickest players on the planet playing for them out wide in the form of Louis Rees-Zammit, a British and Irish Lion when they came to this country in 2021 and would have been again had he not been trying his luck in American grid-iron at the time.
They’re also coached by Pat Lam, who has been around the block several times as a coach after representing New Zealand as a player in 1992, and Lam is known as one of the finest innovators in the game.
Bristol took a bit of a beating at the hands of Saracens the last time they played (in the English Premiership) but there’s so often extra context you need to look into in these days when there are so many logistical and other challenges in a packed professional rugby calendar. And according to Dobson, there was with the Bristol selection last week.
“They rested players for that game. I don’t know if that means they will be rested for our game, but you don’t normally rest players in successive games. They appeared to also select last week around injury fears on 4G surfaces, which is something we can definitely understand,” said Dobson.
“Before last week’s game they were doing well. They won well against Sale in Manchester, which is a really tough place to play. They are a team that can turn it on, and when they do, you can find yourself in trouble. They came here and won at Loftus last year. We know what a difficult venue Loftus is for a visiting team.”
Dobson says that in analysing Bristol he has seen improvements to their game since they visited Pretoria last season.
“They have more dog on defence and are more impactful at the contact points,” said the Stormers director of rugby,.
“They are a team that when they click and get going are as good as any team in the competition. They bring enormous width on attack and until they lost to Saracens were unbeaten. They have the best maul in the Premiership.”
Dobson said that the Stormers had learned from past experience that every English team has to be respected due to their attitude.
“Sometimes they have sent out weaker teams for games in Cape Town but every time we think we are up against a weaker team at the Cape Town Stadium it proves not to be the case. The only time we have put a visiting English team away was when we played Sale Sharks here two years ago and won by 40 points.
“They are always organised and they all have that British bulldog in them. I think an indicator of how much depth there is to the English club game is the fact that Harlequins, who put 60 points on us (at The Stoop) in January, are now languishing near the bottom of the Premiership.”