Bulls will bring it, says wary Winter as Stormers look to quarters too

“We know the Bulls are going to be a proper challenge for us and that’s the way we want it. It’s going to be their last game at Loftus and a typical derby. We expect nothing less than an absolute dogfight. And that’s what we want,” Winter said.

“We want to prep ourselves and put everything together that we need to for our quarterfinal. There is no one better than the Bulls to play ... when they’re on, they can beat anybody. So, we’re looking forward to the challenge. It’s one that is going to be properly fought up front.”

Winter also made a special mention of the Bulls’ backs, and he added that the Stormers weren’t planning on drifting from the attacking style they’ve been making good strides in this season. He also alluded that they would want to keep their “outstanding” backline in the game, and it’s not that hard to understand why.

The Stormers back three were devastating on the counter-attack against the Sunwolves and scored, and created, a number of tries from turnover ball in broken play, with fullback Dillyn Leyds (two tries), wings Cheslin Kolbe (hat-trick) and Seabelo Senatla (one try) all adding their name to the Stormers’ 50-point scoresheet.

“The Bulls are going to properly bring it. When they’re on, they’re easily one of the best packs in the competition, and I think they’ve got an outstanding backline. But so do we. So, we don’t want to go away from that. We don’t want to change anything we’ve been doing in the last couple of weeks, we’re going to stay the same and hopefully just improve on what we’ve been doing,” Winter said.

It’s contentious to question a team’s performance if they put 50 points on their opponent, but given the Stormers’ performance in certain stages against the Sunwolves, the criticism can’t exactly be frowned upon.

The Sunwolves’ low-set scrum made things tough at times for the hosts when it was time to pack down, while they can also confidently say that they have produced much better line-out performances.

Winter also added that they wanted to create their own tries rather than just capitalising on opposition mistakes.

“We’re going to have to make sure that we keep the ball better and create tries from the set-piece and the way we want to play, instead of creating it from turnovers or the opposition’s mistakes,” he said.

“Our line-outs weren’t as good as we wanted them to be, not by a long way ... we’ve addressed the line-out. I don’t want to say it’s a personnel issue, but it is something that we must address because we lost three balls. That’s not good enough, especially coming at this late stage. We don’t want to give too much away on why we lost the ball ,.. we do know why we lost it.” race, and technically did not.

South Africa is currently ranked ninth.