‘By no means’ are the Stormers out of it, insists Fleck

STORMERS coach Robbie Fleck says they can still “catch up with the Lions” in the South African Super Rugby conference despite a 52-31 hiding at Ellis Park at the weekend.

The Stormers went into the round eight match hunting their first away win of the season, but they didn’t get that. In fact, they failed to bag any points for the second week in a row, after suffering a 33-23 loss to the Bulls at Loftus last week.

That means that the Stormers remain on 13 points, while the Lions have returned to top spot in the competition after their eight-try win at home.

The Stormers have now won only three of their eight games in 2018. And before they return to Newlands for a series of home games, they will meet the Sharks in Durban following their bye this week.

Despite those results, Fleck is confident that they are “by no means out of it”.

“I think we can still catch up with them. They’ve got a tough tour ahead of them (to Australasia), but the way they played tonight they can look forward to that tour. By no means are we out of it. We still have eight games to go, so we can catch up,” Fleck said following the match.

In the South African derby in Johannesburg on Saturday, the Lions – who have also been struggling to return to their dominant ways of last year – looked a team on a mission.

The Lions game had many positives – the performance of Madosh Tambwe (who scored four tries – three in the first 15 minutes), their masterful breakdown work, Elton Jantjies’ tactical game and their general attack, to name a few. In the last quarter, the Stormers scored two tries through Damian Willemse and Paul de Wet. And Fleck praised his side for how they “never stopped fighting”.

“There’s no doubt we were beaten by a better team today. The Lions played really well. Credit to my guys, they never stopped fighting. There were opportunities that we didn’t convert, but we were well beaten by a better team today,” Fleck said.

“The Lions were outstanding at the breakdowns. They slowed our ball down, but when we retained possession and held onto the ball we looked fairly decent. I guess that’s a work on, last week was the same thing ... we were beaten at the breakdown by the Bulls.

“There are positives for us. When we retained possession we looked good. Credit to the Lions as well, they didn’t stop defending at the end there. They were very good tonight.”

The Stormers’ bye will provide a good break for them to recuperate after a tough first half of Super Rugby. And two areas Fleck said they need to improve on is their defence and breakdown work.

“We need to be better defensively, we can’t be leaking eight tries. Last week we also gave away a couple of soft tries. So that’s definitely something we need to work on,” he said.

“Our breakdown also needs to be better. But we can definitely draw a lot of positives from the first round. We’re not where we want to be in terms of the log, but we just have to be positive.”