Despite an impressive scoreline, coach Fleck expected much more from lacklustre Stormers
STORMERS coach Robbie Fleck believes his team has a “good thing going” and feels they just need to “smarten up tactically and technically.”
Those were some of Fleck’s thoughts following his team’s 52-15 win over the Sunwolves at Newlands on Saturday – a win that looks better on paper than it did in real life.
The Sunwolves dominated territory and possession in the first half and gave the Stormers a good go at scrum time. And although the Stormers scored eight tries to two and improved their error-ridden first half performance to come out a bit better in the second 40 and score a few nice tries from broken play, Fleck made it clear he wasn’t pleased at all with the night’s proceedings.
“We’re in a good space at the moment – there’s a lot of enthusiasm in the group and culturally I think we’ve got a good thing going. It shows the guys really care for each other, tactically and technically we just have to smarten up a little bit,” the Stormers coach said.
“I’m pretty frustrated with the first half performance and the way the game went. It wasn’t going to help our cause at all, we were looking for a bit of continuity and momentum,” Fleck said.
“We just couldn’t get going. Every time they turned over the ball we turned it over again. There were a lot of mistakes and credit to them, they stretched us defensively in the first half. We had to live off scraps.”
“We got a few lucky breaks from turnover ball and the second half was a bit better, but it wasn’t the kind of game we wanted. I would have liked us to build more phases on attack. Our error rate was too high.”
Maybe they expected it to be a bit too easy, or maybe the fact the Stormers suffered two late blows in Springboks Eben Etebeth and Frans Malherbe’s late withdrawals due to the flu influenced them, but one thing is for certain – they can’t afford to take this past weekend’s performance into the quarter-finals, or even into the last round-robin game against the Bulls.
And it’s something that Fleck is well aware of.
“The Bulls are a different team when they play the Stormers. We certainly will be a better team next week.”
One of the highlights of the game was the performances of a number of individuals, including flyhalf Damian Willemse and fullback and Man of the Match Dillyn Leyds.
Willemse produced another fine display in his second start for the Stormers and he was exciting on attack with ball-in-hand, while he also scored a try and nailed four of his six conversions.
And Fleck described the youngster’s last first two Super Rugby performances as “special”.
“He’s still learning and getting to grips with Super Rugby, but for two weeks in a row he’s been pretty special. I like the way he’s controlling the game on attack, to be fair, we couldn’t really get going. But he got enough to put us on the front foot,” Fleck said.
Fleck also said it was important to continue exposing Willemse to Super Rugby as opposed to Kurt Coleman or Brandon Thomson, who both featured for John Dobson’s SuperSport Rugby Challenge side yesterday.
“We could have put one of them on the bench for this game, but the way Damian is going at the moment…what’s important for us is that he gets as much game time as possible. We made a decision to keep both Brandon and Kurt in the Supersport side, at least they’ll get sufficient game time, which will benefit us.”
“If he (Coleman) had sit on the bench for us, he probably would have gotten five or 10 minutes. So what’s important now is that we build capacity and give sufficient game time to guys who will potentially play a role going forward.”
One player who Fleck – and everyone who looked forward to his Super Rugby bow – would have liked to see more of was World Under-20 Championship Player of the Tournament Juarno Augustus.
The 19-year-old loose forward put in the effort and contributed in the tackle department, but he didn’t get any opportunities to show off his ball-carrying prowess.
“I feel for Augustus, we couldn’t build those phases where we would have liked to see him get his hands on the ball. We couldn’t get going from set-piece and that’s where we could bring him into the game. He was sort of in the wilderness, and you can’t really judge him on that. I still feel he did a good-enough job to compete for a position,” Fleck said.