Flawed performance was actually just what Stormers needed

Gimme. Gimme. Gimme. Gimme. No, those are not the first words that Abba might once have penned to a tune and then changed their minds and replaced it with another word, but what DHL Stormers supporters thought of their team’s closing sequence of four games.

At least that was what they may have been thinking up until this past Saturday, when the Stormers by their own admission were decidedly fortunate to clinch a 34-29 round 15 Vodacom United Rugby Championship win against a Connacht team that should have been put away early doors but just would not go away.

Had it not been for the TMO intervention, they would have lost a crucial game that most people expected them to win at a canter.

Which is what they looked likely to do when Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu scored his first of three tries within the opening three minutes and then kept scoring almost every time they got a chance to claim possession and hold onto it.

Only there was something that wasn’t quite working - while they were mostly really good with ball in hand, it looked like someone in the team was shouting “open the gates” every time Connacht got possession.

A case of “we score then you score” which was reminiscent a bit of the era when Carel du Plessis was the Western Province coach and there was such a strong accent on attack that it felt like defence was an afterthought.

PICKED UP MAXIMUM DESPITE MISTAKES

However, while the modern incarnation of Du Plessis, Stormers director of rugby John Dobson, was unhappy with the performance, and agreed with the perception of a journalist who in the post-match press conference commented that the 80 minutes had provided a glimpse of both the best and the worst the Stormers could do, they did win.

Not only that, they picked up the five log points on offer. You can’t do better than that and the upshot is the Stormers ended the weekend in the top eight for the first time in a while.

They are actually tied seventh on points with Munster, and are only behind the Irish team because of a one point difference in the points differential column. In other words, they are really level pegging with the 2023 champions with three matches to play.

And given that Munster have to go to sixth placed Cardiff this week, while all the Stormers’ remaining games are at DHL Stadium, that means the Cape team is in the pound seats. Which is a statement that may be true but also validates an argument that maybe the Stormers needed the Connacht game to be close, they needed to be given a scare.

When it was put to Dobson that maybe, given that they got the maximum available points anyway, it was good that his team were given a wake-up call because they were forced to dig deep he took issue with the second part of that statement.

“I agree with you that maybe it was a necessary wake-up call but I don’t agree that we had to dig deep. This wasn’t a game where we had to dig deep,” he said.

Dobson is right if by saying that he’s referencing the charitable mood his team was in. They allowed Connacht into the game with their sloppiness and poor defence.

Not for the first time this season there appeared to be a disconnect in the outside channels on defence, although a second watch of the game on video provided a reminder that the Stormers also appeared to lack both connectedness and the necessary appetite for resistance around the fringes of the loose scrums. The tries the visitors scored through their forwards were too easy too.

NEL MAY BE MISSING LINK

The missing link when it comes to the outside channels may well be the injured Ruhan Nel, who is the defensive organiser when he is there. There have been a few players fitting into the No 13 jersey in his absence. Dobson himself wasn’t sure if it was a systemic issue or was sourced in mistakes made by the players.

But whatever the case, the Stormers know they have a lot of work to do on their defence before the 16th round against a Benetton team that was allowed to pick up impressive momentum against the Emirates Lions and is now up to fifth on the log. And that is perhaps a good thing because if the Benetton game was considered a gimme by the Stormers it would be fatal.

“You do make a good point,” said Dobson in returning to the initial question later in the press conference, “in the sense that we have been talking about and looking forward to this last run of four matches for months”.

CONNACHT EQUIVALENT OF OSPREYS GAME LAST YEAR

It was a bit of a safety net for the Stormers when they were struggling, with defeats away invariably being accompanied by assurances like “Don’t worry, we have four home games at the end of the season, so if we win (insert number) of our remaining away games we will be okay.”

In other words, there was an unspoken assumption that because of their excellent record at DHL Stadium, the four remaining games would be wins.

The Connacht game issued a reminder that is not necessarily the case and that the URC is a highly competitive competition. Last year the Ospreys upset the Stormers in a home game they would have expected to win, and the season before that it was arguably the league game against Munster where they were tripped up by complacency.

In both instances those losses proved costly. Maybe the Connacht game was this year’s version of what happened in 2023 and in 2024. This time they got away with it while getting the necessary wakeup call and if it forces some soul searching and a re-set ahead of the remaining three home fixtures it was probably a good thing they didn’t score the easy win they might have against Connacht.