Roos could be out for season as injuries mount for Stormers

It was always unlikely that the DHL Stormers were going to come away with anything from their trip to Belfast once they elected to go under-strength but the cost of their night at Kingspan Stadium goes far deeper than their 35-5 defeat.

It was the first time in their current Vodacom United Rugby Championship campaign that the Cape side failed to pick up at least one log point. In fact, it was the first time since the Emirates Lions shocked them at DHL Stadium in December 2021 that they ended a game in the competition without registering any log points.

But afterwards, it wasn’t the result that troubled coach John Dobson but the mounting injury list. He lost two key players shortly before kick-off and then three players in key positions within the 16 minutes of the start. The most concerning of all the injuries was that to star No 8 Evan Roos, who was helped off with a knee ligament injury.

“Evan was the target of a very poor cleanout, it was a croc roll, the injury is to his knee ligaments and I am not sure of the grade or scale,” said Dobson.

“But he is on crutches now and it does not look good. I’d say I have my doubts about whether we will see him again this season. I just hope he hasn’t had his chances of playing in the World Cup compromised.”

Roos has just returned from injury and this was his first start after returning from the bench last week so it is really bad luck for him. The Stormers do have a more than decent alternative No 8 in Hacjivah Dayimani ready to slot in but Dobson was looking forward to Roos playing an important role for the team in the phase of under-strength derbies that will be played while the Boks are away resting.

Dobson wasn’t too sure about how serious the other injuries were. Fullback Clayton Blommetjies was ruled out before kick-off because of a groin infection that made him so uncomfortable he couldn’t walk, while Junior Pokomela was ruled out ahead of kick-off because he was suffering headaches which may be the result of concussion. Hooker JJ Kotze was stretchered off in the fourth minute, which was another concussion, the same thing happened to Jean-Luc du Plessis.

“I know some will say I am making excuses, but while I am bitterly disappointed to lose, I said to the changeroom that you can get upset when you don’t think you turned up and you let your opponents off. But this wasn’t one of those games,” said Dobson.

“I don’t think in my entire coaching career I experienced what we did tonight. The fact was that by the time we’d got about 16 minutes into the game we had five players missing from the team that had initially been selected.

“We lost our hooker, our No 6, our No 8, our No 10 and our No 15. You can’t really describe the No 6 as being part of the spine of the team, but that is pretty close to the spine of your team. There wasn’t time to readjust, we were disjointed both on attack and defence, and as a consequence of that we were well beaten.

“We were playing one-off runners, we had no depth to our attack. Juan de Jongh came on at 12 when we readjusted the team, and he hasn’t played there for us. So it’s not his fault. Kade Wolhuter was brought into the starting team as a fullback, then ended up playing flyhalf. If Manie (Libbok) and Dan du Plessis had been there, it might have been different, but the disruption got us. We made defensive errors as well.”

It was because of the obstacles that had to be overcome that Dobson said he wasn’t hard on the players afterwards.

“We always knew this was going to be a really tough game after what happened in the games against them last year and it is a tough place to come and play. The Glasgow defeat a few weeks ago is what let us down, we were in a comfortable position on the log and that gap has been closed.”

The Vodacom Bulls went down to Scarlets on the same night so the Shield position hasn’t changed much but it was the five points accumulated by Ulster that was most bothersome to Dobson. The Stormers would like to emulate last year’s achievement of finishing second overall to Leinster so that they can have home-ground advantage at least until the semifinals.

“Ulster are right back in it, that was a big swing tonight. I know that they have a couple of tough derbies coming up later in the competition and hopefully that will bring us back into it.”

The Stormers still hold onto second but what was a seven point advantage over Ulster has now become two. The advantage over the fourth-placed Bulls, second in the conference, is still a comfortable one if you factor in the game in hand the Stormers have on the Pretoria team.