Stormers stars all ready to go

The Stormers will have all their star players back from injury when rugby in South Africa restarts with a planned eight team domestic competition at the end of August/first half of September.

The Stormers were blighted by injuries shortly before the suspension of Super Rugby because of Covid, with the loss of skipper Siya Kolisi and hooker Bongi Mbonambi in the opening game against the Hurricanes being followed after that by long term injuries to fellow Springbok World Cup winners Pieter-Steph du Toit, Steven Kitshoff and Herschel Jantjies. There were also additional injuries to the likes of lock JD Schickerling when the coronavirus pandemic hit and rugby was suspended after the loss to the Sharks in Durban in mid-March.

According to Stormers team doctor Jason Suter all of those players will be ready to play if the mooted domestic competition starts when is hoped. However, given that the current return to training protocols preclude contact training, Dr Suter acknowledged that now is probably not the right time to give a conclusive report on each player’s readiness to play.

“Everyone is on track but all the players are currently stuck in the training load and rehab phase, they can’t do contact and progression,” said Suter.

“We are following the government guidelines and we are hamstrung a bit by the fact that we need government approval before we can go from one phase to another. Once we have a clear idea of when we are playing again then we can plan better. But Kitsie (Kitsoff) will be ready to train fully with the team from Monday, and Bongi (Mbonambi) will be able to participate in full team training from the end of next week.

“Siya is already back in training and Herschel Jantjies will be back in full training with the team from Monday. I think that is all our major injuries. We are assuming there will be a month of non-contact work followed by a month where we reintroduce contact to get the players ready to play again so barring any unforeseen complications they should all be ready for the first game.”

Suter added that the coaches and medical staff had been pleasantly surprised by the condition of some of the players when they reported to team training at the High Performance Centre in Bellville for the first time in nearly four months at the start of this week.

“The fitness is where you’d expect it to be. Maybe not where it needs to be, but on part with what you’d expect at the start of a pre-season, and some of the players are a bit better off than that, which is something we have been pleasantly surprised about.”

Stormers assistant coach Dawie Snyman said that although the current restrictions make full training impossible, it was good to have the squad together again.

“It was great to just be back standing in the sun and see the players work a bit. That what’s we do, and it was good to see faces we haven’t seen in a while,” said Snyman of the first few days back.

“We are keeping to the restrictions, but the difference between this week and last week is that we have players running in groups of five and a ball has been reintroduced to the training. Obviously that’s preferable to the guys training alone. It is good for each player to have a guy next to him pushing him. You can see with the passing that the timing is out, some of the guys haven’t touched a ball in quite a while.”