Manie Libbok walked away with the Man of the Match award after the DHL Stormers’ big win over the Cell C Sharks in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship derby in Durban, but it really was a day when the big men and the usual unsung heroes should have been given more credit. For it was the forwards that put the Cape side on the road to their comfortable triumph.
There were several forwards who made it possible for the Stormers, including the powerful scrumming hooker Joseph Dweba, who has really started to come into his own under the coaching of John Dobson and Rito Hlungwani, and Ruben van Heerden playing in the blue rather than the black of his old team made a difference too. But for us Neethling Fouche was the stand-out.
It was easy to forget watching Fouche play his part in destroying the Sharks scrum unit that just a few years ago he was one of the names on a controversial list that was passed around at a SARU meeting of players that the Stormers wanted to sell. The Stormers coaches would not have known anything about the list, with people higher up the food chain at Western Province understood to be responsible for it.
Fortunately, during the hullaballoo that followed the publishing of the list, Fouche was persuaded to stay. For every week he is proving that he is the perfect alternative tighthead to the world rated Frans Malherbe. While the Sharks were without three Bok front-row players, the Stormers were missing Steven Kitshoff and Malherbe and had just one survivor in Deon Fourie from the pack that won last year’s URC final, and the Sharks still had the services of the Bok capped Ntuthuko Mchunu and the powerfully built Carlu Sadie.
So even coach Dobson was surprised how easily his team dominated the Sharks at scrum time in the first half, he expected eventual dominance through slow poison, and the underrated Fouche was a big part of that dominance. It netted four scrum penalties and laid the foundation for the 46-19 win and for players at the back like Libbok to dazzle with their attacking skills.