Stormers to stick with ‘high risk’ rugby

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John Dobson is adamant that the DHL Stormers won’t deviate from what works for them when they take on the Glasgow Warriors on Sunday.

He was responding to an article in Scottish newspaper The Scotsman, in the buildup to the Vodacom United Rugby Championship clash at Scotstoun Stadium. Glasgow assistant coach Nigel Carolan was quoted as saying that – on defence – the Stormers “bring an unbelievable amount of line-speed, it’s almost reckless”.

Carolan added: “We saw when the Stormers played [and lost] at Cardiff a few weeks back that it is very difficult to maintain that level of line-speed for every phase, and eventually they get a bit clustered, the backfield gets compromised, and space opens up.”

The Capetonians arrived in Scotland having scored 111 points and conceded 49 in three successive victories at home against London Irish, the Vodacom Bulls and the Lions.

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Adopting an exciting gameplan that is indicative of the region, Dobson has produced a Stormers side that won the inaugural URC and which leads the SA Shield from second place on the overall standings after 11 rounds of the 2022-23 campaign.

“Somebody wrote in one of the Scottish papers that the Stormers are a high risk, high-reward team – reckless on attack, reckless on defence, or something like that,” he told reporters this week.

“So one of our players, I won’t say who, described us as the Hard Livings gang of rugby – we live hard in terms of the way we play, and there is an element of risk around that.

“We’ve got quite a good pact with the players in that we’ll trust them and we want to play this style of rugby. We think our rugby fits the region; it’s what’s in the DNA, it’s what gets the crowd.

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“I know it doesn’t sound like a massive amount but given the context of when it was, to get 15,000 fans in on New Year’s Eve [at Cape Town Stadium] … we have to play this brand of rugby, it’s what works for die mense [the people] of Cape Town,” Dobson added.

“It is high risk … and the only thing we ask in return [of the players] is that if things go wrong, then we scramble, and that’s where I think [defence coach] Norman Laker has done such a good job, we’ve been really good on defence.”

The Stormers’ 15-game run without a loss in the URC came to an end on a 4G pitch in Cardiff in Round 6. The visitors went on to finish the match having outscored the hosts by four tries to two, but a masterclass kicking performance from Rhys Priestland consigned the tourists to a 30-24 defeat.

On visiting sub-zero Glasgow for the first time on an artificial turf that poses a daunting task, Dobson said: “If things go wrong, we recover well and that’s just working back, scrambling, closing down their attack in two, three phases and getting back on top of the opposition.

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“So that’s the deal, it’s how we want to play, and how we think rugby is in this region. It might be on a 4G pitch on a rainy Sunday evening in Glasgow where it doesn’t work – it didn’t work in Cardiff.

“Some Irish journalist described us as ‘loose as hell’ and there are going to be days when the wave closes and we’re out of the sun, and that could be this Sunday.

“But we’re going to make sure we’re not going to change who we are, and we have a saying in this team: ‘We are who we are.’ And it’s what got us here.”

Photo: Chris Fairweather/Huw Evans Agency/Gallo Images

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Devin Hermanus