Weather and surface cloud Stormers hopes in URC final
Stormers coach John Dobson might be feeling a sense of dread when he looks at the weather forecast for Cape Town. On my weather app it has been fluctuating between a 60%-70% chance of rain on Saturday, which is when Munster come to town for a United Rugby Championship (URC) final that was sold out within three hours of tickets going on sale and that in terms of crowd volume should rival the epic Heineken Champions Cup (HCC) Grand Final at the Aviva.
Weather can be a great leveller, and of course wet weather will suit the Irish province, who play in those conditions regularly. But it is not just the predicted weather that should concern Dobson, or for that matter anyone who wants to see the decider between the best SA team and the last Irish hope of a province/club trophy played in conditions that might make it possible to replicate the spectacle provided by LaRochelle and Leinster in Dublin.
It is raining in Cape Town as I write and more rain is predicted for Wednesday (50%) and Thursday (90%). Western Province took the wise decision to switch two Currie Cup games that were scheduled for DHL Stadium before this week’s final to Athlone Stadium, but that attempt to protect the field might become meaningless as the field is in such a state of disrepair that a few days of rain could have a calamitous impact.
The field was initially laid for soccer, and will be replaced by a hybrid pitch, meaning half grass and half synthetic, during the off-season, yet that will be too late to prevent the bizarre situation faced by the Stormers of having one of their big strengths, the scrum, as well as their vaunted attacking game if it is wet, negated by the surface.
CONFIDENT
Though Munster are the only team to have beaten the Stormers at home since December 2021, the hosts should feel confident of securing their second successive URC title provided the pitch is reasonably playable. When Munster beat them, it was by just two points, and the Cape team often had them on the rack but just didn’t make use of their scoring opportunities.
Munster looked out on their feet just after halftime after a Stormers fightback from an early deficit. That poor start, which might have had its roots in the huge amount of travelling the Stormers were doing at that point (they had travelled overseas twice in three weeks), is not something the Stormers will want to repeat regardless of the state of the field.
They started nervy in their semifinal against Connacht too, and had to fight back from 8-0 down. If Munster get ahead like that again, they might not let the hosts back in. Given the Munster fighting spirit in recent matches, such as when they recovered from a 19-point deficit to draw in Durban, they are not opponents you can relax against.
If Munster do win it will be an astounding story. They were 14th on the URC log shortly before Christmas and had to fight their way back into contention. They haven’t lost in their past six away games, and have won two away playoff games on the bounce. If they win a third, they will be deserved champions even though they only finished fifth, which by my reckoning should have excluded them from the play-offs as having eight teams in a 16 team competition doesn’t reward consistency.
BIGGER BURDEN
But Munster should also have been given extra motivation and taken on a bigger burden from a national perspective after the HCC final. Their arch-rivals Leinster losing their second successive European final means that if Munster don’t win in Cape Town, the Irish dominance in the various competitions would not have netted any silverware.
Munster are not a shadow Irish team like Leinster are and neither are the Stormers a shadow Bok team. But given the way that Leinster have bottled it under pressure over the past two weekends, there might just be an element of doubt starting to creep into the Irish psych before the World Cup.
Yes, Ireland swept all before them in the Six Nations, but there has always been a question mark over the Irish ability to deal with the pressure of playoff rugby. Leinster may not have helped themselves with their selection policy, and one thing Munster will have this week that Leinster may have lacked in their botched play-off attempts over successive weekends is battle hardness.
A Munster win will arrest what, given how Irish rugby was shaping before, has started to look like a bit of a momentum slide. Hence Graham Rowntree’s men will be carrying the hopes of Irish supporters who don’t normally back the men in the red. And as Ireland stand in the Bok path at the World Cup, the Stormers support should just this once also go across local franchise lines.