Stormers must step up in race to URC title — Dobson
The Stormers solidified their position in the United Rugby Championships top eight with a comprehensive 42-12 victory over Leinster at Cape Town Stadium on Saturday.
The win elevates them to fifth on the table but they will have to be unblemished in their remaining matches to reel in the Bulls, who are six points better off in fourth. Director of rugby John Dobson conceded it is almost a lost cause.
“The devastation of that result against Ospreys was that we could have finished that weekend two points behind the Bulls, looking for a home playoff. That’s pretty ’much unrecoverable. Now it s a must-win tour,” he said of their matches against the Dragons and Connacht.
“We’ve never had that sort of feeling before; our level of desperation. We are taking our Springboks. This will be a different mindset from the first tour. It’s full metal jacket to try win every game.”
Man of the match in Cape Town Neethling Fouche stressed his team was in need of a rebound.
“We weren ’ t happy with last week’s performance, particularly in the scrums, and we let our fans down,” said the tight head prop. “We just wanted to come out and give them something to smile about.” The win was a timely confidence booster.
“We still believe in ourselves. We haven’t hit our straps the way we wanted, but there is confidence brewing. We can be dangerous going to the end of the competition.”
For that to happen, Fouche suggested his team needed to play with the same intensity for the duration of the match, “coming out in the second half with the same intensity as and to keep building on that the” . first
The win, though pleasing, came against a Leinster team stripped of their top talent.
Leinster, who have to concern themselves with a Champions Cup semifinal against Northampton next week, left some of their elite players at home. In fact, half their coaching team left for Dublin after their defeat to the Lions to help prepare for the more pressing engagement. As a consequence they relinquished the log lead to Glasgow Warriors and unlike Munster, who adopted a different selection approach, will leave SA empty-handed.
Perhaps learning from that experience, the Stormers will now travel to Newport (Wales) and Galway with their best available squad. They then return to Cape Town for a league stage climax against the Lions in Cape Town.