DHL Stormers forwards coach Rito Hlungwani has become so well known for being hard to please and for repeating the “we must improve” mantra ad-nauseam that it has almost become a standing joke when he goes in front of press conferences.
In the sense that we, including the Stormers media people, can anticipate what he is going to say.
But given how his pack has performed in the first few weeks of the Vodacom United Rugby Championship season, and after the forwards have laid the foundation for four wins in four starts, surely this is a time when he can change the script and own up to being satisfied? If you think that, you are destined to be disappointed.
“Maybe one of the things we can improve is that we had four or five opportunities and we converted just one maul,” said Cape rugby’s Mr Perfectionist when it was put to him that knowing how he was, there would be something he felt needed improving.
“Three or four of those mauls brought penalties, so that was good, and the one led to Sacha (Feinberg-Mngomezulu) scoring a try on the blindside. But we (the forwards) should probably look to be driving over the line and scoring those tries ourselves. We want to go over the tryline at every single opportunity.”
He’s right too. As Stormers blindside flank Ben-Jason Dixon, who has just been recalled to the Springbok squad as he makes his way back into rugby after a long injury enforced absence, put it, there have been times when the Stormers have made heavy weather of their dominance and not taken full advantage of their opportunities.
SLOW POISON IS WORKING
“It is probably a combination of the two,” said Dixon when he was asked whether the Stormers were profiting from the exertion of slow poison or were struggling to be as clinical as they could be.
“We are a long way short of being as clinical we could be. We have been working on the cohesion of the forwards and the backline, but we need to make more of it (our forward dominance), we sometimes make heavy weather of it (by not taking our opportunities).
“But there is another aspect of it, the slow poison aspect. We tackle them back, we put the ball in the air, we chase the kicks, we give the opposition trouble at the lineouts and the scrums. We know that eventually takes its toll. It makes it difficult for the opposing team and that is slow poison.
‘The way our set piece has been working has been really encouraging and it does boost confidence when the set piece is working well. However, I know Rito says it every time, but it is true - we are not close to arriving yet. There are some serious teams out there who will test us. We don’t want to be caught off guard.
“So we are under no illusions that we have arrived (as a team or as pack). We know where we can improve,” he added.
One of those serious teams that Dixon was referring to might just be Saturday’s opponents, Benetton, who have yet to lose to the Stormers in Treviso.
“We see them as a massive challenge. We saw how Italy played against the Springboks when they were in South Africa, and we also know how well they played against the Lions at home. It is a massive challenge and we know we have struggled in the past at this venue. We see it as a type of playoff game.”
What makes it a playoff game is where the game is positioned in the Stormers’ season. They will go into a hiatus of more than a month after this as the competition breaks for the international window, with the Stormers next seeing action when they visit Limerick for a tough game against Munster on 29 November.
WILL GO FOR BROKE
Given that a break comes after this, there is no reason for the Stormers not to go for broke and play like there is no tomorrow in the quest for the win that will give them a perfect five out of five wins to take as a platform into the next phase of the competition.
“Yes, we will be throwing everything we can at Benetton, definitely,” said Hlungwani.
“It will be nice to finish with another win. It is extremely important to us. Before we left Cape Town we set certain goals, and we need to make good on those goals.”
Which is surely another way of saying that the Stormers aimed high at departure and were looking for three wins out of three on the road, a result that would give them a start that is the diametric opposite of all their previous seasons in the URC. Even in the year they won the competition, 2022, they started off poorly and were under pressure after five games.
And just to show that he isn’t completely glass empty and can be glass half at times, Hlungwani did acknowledge the progress that has been made this season.
“We are happy with the progress and what we are doing, we just need to step it up a bit. We need to break the opponent more, there is room for us to be more ruthless,” he said.
In some of the games the opposition team has still been in the game at halftime when the Stormers’ dominance should really have played them out of it, so what he says is grounded in reality. It’s a good sign for Stormers fans that there’s so much room for improvement when only one possible point - a try scoring bonus point against the Ospreys - has been missed out on in four games.
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