DHL Stormers assistant coach Dawie Snyman reckons the questions over the Cape team’s ability to win overseas are outdated and the corner was effectively turned for them this time last year when they scored a few crucial wins away from home.
He’s not wrong either - while the Stormers returned with only one win from their three-match Vodacom United Rugby Championship tour of Wales, Italy and Scotland in October, there was context to those results.
The tour coincided with a period when they were going through an injury crisis, with several Springboks and rank-and-file players out in addition to Manie Libbok being unavailable due to international commitments.
On that tour, the Stormers convincingly shut out Zebre in Parma in between defeats to the Ospreys in Bridgend and Edinburgh at the Beehive Stadium. The loss to the Ospreys came in a game that the Stormers were pressing to win a few minutes from the end before conceding a late try that robbed them of a minimum of what would have been a deserved losing bonus point.
The Edinburgh loss was the big stumble of the trip, but even there the one-sided scoreline didn’t really mirror the balance of the game, with the visitors conceding points when they were chasing the game in the last quarter to give a distorted aspect to the end result.
QUESTIONS PROVE MEMORIES ARE SHORT
It was those losses that sustained the question marks over the Stormers’ overseas form, but what those questions really do, and Snyman said it without saying it in as many words, is just prove that memories are short.
“We have turned a corner in the way we play in overseas games,” said Snyman. “We have learned a lot of lessons, not just when it comes to playing overseas but in general. There were questions about our ability to play overseas, but last year we beat both Stade Francais and Connacht away on 4G pitches."
Snyman added that “in playing in those conditions and on those surfaces, you start picking things up, little things that start adding together.”
Snyman could have added another overseas win to the list of Stormers triumphs overseas last season. The game at Franklin Gardens was only a friendly and was played while the Northampton Saints’ international players were on England duty during the Guinness Six Nations, but the hosts did put out a strong team against a Stormers team that was also without Springboks who were resting.
Given that the Saints ended up as Gallagher Premiership champions, that was no small achievement, while the Stormers went on to also beat the Dragons in Wales later in the competition.
IMPORTANT GAME IN BUILDUP TO BUSINESS END
Saturday’s final Investec Champions pool game though will nonetheless be seen as an important moment for the Stormers in the sense that a game we haven’t mentioned here was the loss to Glasgow Warriors at the Scotstoun in last year’s URC quarterfinal. Should they get there, the Stormers might well find themselves having to travel again for the playoffs as a top-four finish is still quite far away for them, and winning at La Defense Arena will be good for their confidence.
“We are really motivated to do well on Saturday, and it will be a good test for us,” Snyman said.
“We want to do well overseas and tour well, that’s going to be important for us as a squad going forward.”
The Stormers have a chance to end third in Pool 4 if they win with a bonus point and other results go their way, but Snyman warned against chasing a four-try bonus point from the off.
“The first thing is to get the win so we can’t really get ahead of ourselves by trying to score four tries and get a bonus point. We need to do the right things to get the victory firstly, and then take it from there.”
AIMING TO SUSTAIN MOMENTUM
However, with an advance to the knockouts of the Champions Cup becoming a bonus once they lost their opening game at home to Toulon, the main focus for the Stormers is to continue building and sustaining momentum after turning their season around in December.
“It was nice to win in front of our home fans like we did against Sale and that was a really good performance from us, but it was not a performance that happened in isolation,” he said.
“The momentum started turning our way in the home URC derbies and we want to continue building on that momentum. There are areas of our game we are working on and we are well aware that we are playing this game a week before we play an important URC game against Leinster in Dublin. So, we want to continue to build on what has worked for us in the last three games.”
What worked particularly well against the Sale Sharks and was a pronounced turnaround from what was happening earlier in the season, was the clinical finishing of attacking opportunities. Ironically, that was a game where the visitors, faced with a dominating defensive system, were the wasteful team when it came to visits to the opposition 22. Previously it was the Stormers who wasted attacking impetus and field position.
“There were one or two games earlier in the season where we had those opportunities in the 22 and we didn’t convert, and we could feel against Sale that we were building scoreboard pressure in the game,” said Snyman.
“And once we got into those zones, the forwards did a really good job to either create space or score themselves.”