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Stormers do have character but being wasteful is a trend

rugby02 December 2024 06:30
By:Gavin Rich
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John Dobson @ Getty Images

Even Hollywoodbets Sharks fans would have been feeling some pity for DHL Stormers coach John Dobson after his team’s gut-wrenching defeat in Durban.

When Manie Libbok ran through to score after the hooter, dotting down under the posts, it appeared that the Cape team had managed to pull off an escape act of Houdini proportions. Not that a win would have been undeserved, given how many opportunities they created for themselves in the game - and wasted.

The Stormers’ inability to capitalise on periods of dominance is though as recurring a theme for them as the one that is less controllable for them - the refusal of referees to reward their scrum dominance. Or at least to the extent the Stormers big men should be rewarded.

The massive scrumming effort and the way his team hung in beyond the point where most other teams would have kept pressing for the win, trailing as they were by 13 points with less than two minutes remaining, will have pleased Dobson. Before the international break, after the defeat to Glasgow Warriors in Stellenbosch, there were questions being asked about the team’s level of desperation, in other words about the culture that has so long been the Stormers’ strong point.

Well, after that effort in Durban, those question marks have been removed. Opposition coach John Plumtree summed it up perfectly in the post-match television interview - “That showed just how much character there is in the Stormers team.”

DOBSON RIGHTLY ENCOURAGED

Dobson told the post-match press conference that, while gutted at losing and no doubt quite furious too as there were several coach killers in that performance, that he had also been encouraged by what he had seen.

“Today gave me hope, even though we are sitting with a defeat,” said Dobson.

“We were without five or six Boks. To come here and fight like we did gives me hope about this team. I saw a lot of our DNA out there. I feel quite confident that we can put in a good run now, particularly with several of our Boks coming back into the system in the coming weeks. To come here and do what we did, in a funny way, gives me hope. There are way more positives and it gives us a good place to launch from.”

In saying that, Dobson appears to be acknowledging that he too was starting to wonder if his team was still as desperate and hungry as it was when winning the URC as underdogs in 2022. For the big encouragement from a Stormers viewpoint was surely the drive and passion of the team, rather than necessarily the way they executed.

BUILDUP TO DISALLOWED TRY PROVIDED MICROCOSM OF PROBLEM

In many ways, what would have been his team’s match winning try were it not for the TMO taking play back to the genesis of a long multi-phase attack that eventually saw Manie Libbok jetting over between the posts, was an illustration of a quandary that Dobson faces.

The Stormers are often criticised for being too over-elaborate and overdoing the 50/50 passes, but it is when a game becomes loose and chaos is created that the Stormers are their most dangerous. Ask any opposing coach and he’d probably tell you that the key to beating the Stormers is to keep it as tight as possible.

In that final move they had to go from their own tryline to win the game, and but for that small knock-on, they did that. Had it stood, it would have been the try of the season. And it wouldn’t have happened were it not for Libbok’s X-factor genius. His cross kick that found Herschel Jantjies was the key, but he was also involved earlier in the counter-attack. Of course, he rounded it off, but it was also Libbok who made the handling error at a ruck that ultimately led to the try being cancelled.

That Libbok was the heart of what was good but was also the player who made the error is a narrative developing not only around Libbok himself but around the Stormers as a whole. The Stormers might not have needed to score that last try to win had it not been for the head high pass from Libbok to Suleiman Hartzenberg inside the Stormers 22 that led to Andre Esterhuizen scoring for the Sharks.

That was the score that effectively cost the Stormers the game. They were well in it at 14-8 down and looked to be taking control. But the question is - given that the likes of Libbok and Warrick Gelant can create so much out of nothing, should he be curbing those instincts, or should he just be accepting that those kind of errors are the result of risks that have to be taken if you want to satisfy the team’s ambitious attacking DNA?

THEY LOST IT IN THE FIRST HALF

Not that it was just late in the game that the Stormers made errors that cost them. It was in fact the first half where they gave it away, and Dobson was the first to recognise that.

“We created so many opportunities. To be fair, the Sharks also bottled one or two,” said Dobson.

“We were profligate and wasteful. I can name six (scoring opportunities not taken) out of the top of my head. That was probably the difference in the end. We can look back on the game thinking we could have won it right at the end there, but 40 minutes before that we lost the game because of the errors we made up to that point.

“I thought we were imperious in the second half. 65 minutes in, I thought we had the game under control. What happened at the end was a bit of a bonus, to be honest.”

The Stormers will take a break from their URC campaign to focus on the Investec Champions Cup over the next two weeks, with their first game being against Toulon in Gqeberha on Saturday. It is unclear whether it will be by this weekend but two injured Boks in Frans Malherbe and Salmaan Moerat are due back shortly, as is Deon Fourie. Evan Roos is expected back later in the month.

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