Vermeulen won’t be fit to play

STORMERS coach Allister Coetzee will demand extra physicality from his team to compensate for the absence of Duane Vermeulen in Saturday’s Super Rugby playoff against the Brumbies.

Vermeulen, the talismanic leader, has not responded as well as hoped to a bulging disc and medical advice suggests he needs more time to recover.

If the Stormers beat the Brumbies and had to travel to Sydney to face the Waratahs in the semifinal there was only a slim chance Vermeulen would be ready for that, Coetzee said.

“Duane has showed a lot of improvement but he won’t be available for this weekend,” Coetzee said.

“There is a lot of improvement . . . but he might need another week or two. You have to be absolutely sure that he is ready because you don’t want to set him back [injured] again.

“When he is fully pain free he will start with his cardio sessions. Once he is fully out of pain, because it’s an accurate indicator of where he is, then he will be back in full training and will start taking contact.

“I wouldn’t rule him out of the competition completely because he is the type of guy who wants to play, but we’ll follow the advice of the medical team.”

That means Nizaam Carr will continue in the No 8 jersey, where he has shown glimpses of returning to the form that made him a Springbok last year.

Carr captained a weakened Stormers team against the Sharks in Durban last weekend, and is a more than handy replacement for Vermeulen.

“I’m really pleased with the way Nemo [Carr] is back in form but he is different to Duane,” Coetzee said. “We are looking at an increased 2% physicality from all players to compensate for it.”

Coetzee was withering in his assessment of the Brumbies’ negative tactics after the teams met at Newlands last month. The Stormers won 25-24 but Coetzee felt the Australians were given too much leeway at the breakdown and scrums in that encounter.

“They were happy and prepared to concede penalties to make sure we couldn’t get quick ball,” Coetzee said after that game. “They conceded 19 penalties and they didn’t get a yellow card? They played our players off the ball. There were a lot of incidents at the breakdown I was unhappy about.

“They were content to reduce the game to a stop-start affair. That many penalties in a game is ridiculous and they were coached at times instead of it being escalated to yellow cards. We had three scrum penalties against their seven men close to their line. They kept on collapsing the scrum. I was very surprised there was no penalty try.”

Coetzee believes this weekend’s referee, Jaco Peyper, will have a better command of the game.

Meanwhile, the Brumbies could be without key flanker David Pocock, who suffered concussion against the Crusaders at the weekend.