Coach John Dobson has tempered celebrations of the Stormers’ recent success in the build up to an important showdown against the Lions at Ellis Park on Saturday. DYLAN JACK reports.
The Stormers will travel to Johannesburg on the back of three good results in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship. After claiming a rare win at Loftus Versfeld over the Vodacom Bulls, the Stormers fought back to secure a draw with the Sharks in Durban and then beat their coastal rivals in Cape Town a week later.
The results have earned Dobson and his team plenty of plaudits, but during a Wednesday virtual media conference, he was keen to emphasise that the Stormers are still very much a work in progress.
“We need to keep growing,” Dobson said. “We have got a lot of plaudits for the last few weeks. But we can’t let that go to our heads. I think we aren’t probably as good as some of the praise we have got. We are still very much a work in progress.
“What we want to do is make a statement and get better every week. Last week against the Sharks, we weren’t the finished product by any stretch. That’s why we just want to get better this week.”
Dobson said that in the context of the season and with what lies ahead, the Stormers will have to try and come away from Johannesburg with as many points as they can.
Following Saturday’s matches, the South African teams will have a week’s break before they travel to play one match overseas. They will then play their postponed home games against European opponents in March.
The Stormers will face eighth-placed Connacht overseas, while the Sharks will take on a Benetton team missing a host of Italian internationals and the Bulls will face bottom-placed Zebre, who have not won a game all season.
“These local derbies are incredibly important obviously for the South African conference and trying to qualify for whatever we can qualify,” Dobson explained. “We travel after this and we are aware that we have a very tough game in Connacht. The Sharks face Benetton, who will have 23 players in the Italian squad, and the Bulls play Zebre.
“I do think what is going to happen after that, is when those teams travel down here, South African teams will be trying to fill their points every week by beating an opposition team in South African conditions when they have just come from winter. You can see the Bulls and Lions racking up five-pointer after five-pointer at Loftus and Ellis Park.
“So, we need to give ourselves a buffer for this upcoming away trip as much as possible. Then it is trying to fill your boots every week. That’s going to be completely different from these straight shootouts in local derbies where it is either eight-point or 10-point swings. We need as much of a buffer for that as we can get.”
Captain Steven Kitshoff said the trip to Ellis Park presents the Stormers with a test of their mental strength and leadership.
“After the last three weeks, it’s another tough away game for us. It’s definitely going to test our maturity, our processes, the way we want to play,” the Springbok prop said. “Mentally, going up there, being switched on, making sure we stick to the plan will be vital. If things do go wrong, how quickly can we turn it around? It’s definitely going to test the leadership of the group, the 23 players as a whole.
“It is a big test, but the way we have prepared this week, the confidence in the squad is good.”
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