Coach John Dobson says the loss of the DHL Stormers’ 15-game unbeaten run in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship did not come without some gains.
The Stormers dominated possession at Cardiff Arms Park on Saturday, and outscored Cardiff by four tries to two, but handling errors at key moments let them down as a masterclass kicking performance from Wales flyhalf Rhys Priestland consigned the defending champions to a surprise 30-24 loss.
It concluded the Stormers’ impressive run without a loss, and speaking post-match from Wales, Dobson told media: “I can’t fault our effort but the Welsh teams played very cleverly, especially Cardiff this evening, the way they manipulated our back three.
“And obviously the conditions, it’s something we’ve got to get better at, especially on a 4G pitch… I don’t know if you noticed how much ball we just let bobble around the breakdown, it was really poor.
“We mauled fantastic but scrumwise, these Welsh guys did much better than we expected, and their kicking game really put us under pressure. Cardiff here, in these conditions, it was always going to be tough… very impressed by their tactical game and fight.
ICYMI – Cardiff end Stormers’ streak
“I thought we were quite poor in looking after the ball … when we came into the 22 we tried to play our attack, we just turned over so much ball there. And even though we got the three maul tries, we had a lot of frustrations on the maul defence.”
The visitors had to finish the first half a man down after No 8 Hacjivah Dayimani was yellow-carded for an unavoidable head-on-head collision with hooker Kristian Dacey. A diplomatic Dobson played down the dismissal as a contributing factor.
“We just lost against a Cardiff team that played particularly well and it meant a lot to them, so me talking about my very real and substantial frustrations with the referee [Mike Adamson] is going to sound like a poor loser, which I don’t really want to come across,” the Stormers coach said.
Defeat on Saturday for the Capetonians completed a nine-point haul from a three-match tour to Italy and Wales, that included a bonus-point win over Zebre and 16-16 draw with Ospreys.
HIGHLIGHTS: Cardiff stun Stormers
Dobson added: “If we emerged from this tour with nine points from three games, it’s not the end of the world… having not played particularly well.
“The positives is we deliberately tried to get into the low 30s for the number of players used on the tour … someone like Suleiman [Hartzenberg], Sacha Mngomezulu, would’ve learnt a lot from something like today.
“Also, in a kind of positive way, is not having people talk about a record all the time is quite nice, get that off our back – not that we wanted to!
“We worked a lot on maul and lineouts, got a lot of contestables, and also the general effort of the group throughout.”
The Stormers return home to face the Lions at Ellis Park on Saturday.
Photo: Athena Pictures/Getty Images
