DHL Stormers coach John Dobson was asked at his team announcement press conference about the different pressure brought about by expectation, and anyone who has been drawn into a rugby conversation in the Western Cape recently might understand why.
The disappointment that engulfed Stormers supporters when they finished outside of the Vodacom URC top four and then lost an away quarterfinal to Glasgow Warriors for a second successive year has completely disappeared. It has been replaced by an air of positivity and expectation, and those who double as Stormers and Springbok supporters will be forgiven for thinking every game you watch is one you should expect your team to win.
Of course, the Stormers don’t belong in the same stratosphere as the double World Cup-winning and now successive Rugby Championship-winning Boks as serial winners. It has only been seven games won on the bounce, six in the URC and now an excellent away win in the Investec Champions Cup. That’s not really a lot. Liverpool won their first five Premier League games this season, and look where they are now.
QUALITY OF PERFORMANCES HAVE GIVEN FANS HOPE
It was the manner with which the Stormers went about winning those seven games, of which five were overseas, which has been so impressive and is responsible for the change of expectation. The alarming thing about the loss at the Scotstoun that ended their previous season back in June was the perception that they were easily out-muscled. Now it’s the other way around.
In some senses the Stormers have become the Boks’ Mini-me. It’s easy to see why I say that if you consider the scrumming culture that has been developed at the Western Cape franchise, as well as the way a supersonic variant of the Bok bomb squad has enacted a gear shift in the last few games.
There is greater depth at forward, and it isn’t because of the cheque book being used to lure players in. Instead it is players developing to the point where they are now maturing, in many cases quicker than Dobson intended.
With two of the three incoming forwards during the off-season, Ntuthuko Mchunu and Oli Kebble, both being loosehead props, the Stormers coach now has some difficult decisions to make in that position, given how good Vernon Matongo has shown him to be. Matongo doesn’t even find a place in the match-day 23 for Saturday’s second Champions Cup game against La Rochelle in Gqeberha and neither, for that matter, does that powerful but underrated veteran scrummager Ali Vermaak. Plus everyone is talking about Oliver Reid, who was part of the Junior Bok team that won the Junior World Championship, as someone who will graduate to becoming a successful senior player sooner rather than later.
The other Stormers forward arrival in the off-season was Ruan Ackermann, who started last week against Bayonne and showed that there is good cover for Evan Roos. Keke Morabe is also due back from his long-term injury absence soon, and there’s also Louw Nel.
Talking of Morabe’s injury, that happened in the corresponding game of last year when Toulon came to Nelson Mandela Bay with an ultra-physical approach that shocked the Stormers and inflicted the kind of home defeat you just don’t recover from in this competition.
BULLS IN A TRICKY POSITION
Which cues the Vodacom Bulls, who put up a good show in the first half last week against Bordeaux-Begles at Loftus before the champions showed why they are champions by flexing their considerable muscle, as well as their explosiveness and running skills, in the second half.
Unlike the Stormers, who after last weekend’s excellent away win are playing this weekend to be in the pound seats in their quest for a home playoff, the Bulls are playing for survival when they visit Franklin Gardens to play last year’s beaten finalists, Northampton Saints, on Sunday.
The Bulls don’t boast a good record against Northampton but apart from last year’s home loss in the Pool phase, they also haven’t ever taken a full-strength squad to Franklin Gardens. And they will go understrength once again, with most of the top Boks staying home to rest up for next week’s crucial URC derby against the Sharks in Durban.
The Bulls squad isn’t quite as weak, or understrength, as some of the recent travelling Bulls squads have been, and with Gerhard Steenekamp, Johan Grobbelaar and Willie le Roux likely to play, there may just be a small glimmer of hope they can get something out of the game. It is highly unlikely, and if the Bulls don’t win, the Champions Cup games they play in January will effectively become dead rubber fixtures. They need at least a losing bonus point for that not to be the case.
A NEW BEGINNING FOR THE SHARKS
The Hollywoodbets Sharks played away last week, so they aren’t under quite the same pressure as the Bulls are in the sense of needing to win an away game, but they will be in the same position as the Bulls if they lose to Saracens. In other words, the battle for a top-16 place, let alone home ground advantage in that phase, will become so uphill that it should be beyond them.
The Sharks have a new coach and we’re hearing that they may also have a no-nonsense and driven new captain in the form of Andre Esterhuizen, who plays his 100th game in the Hollywoodbets Kings Park clash with a Saracens team he locked horns with often when he was playing for the English club, Harlequins.
We wrote earlier this week that Esterhuizen is one the rest of the Sharks should follow, so if it does prove true that he takes the figurative captaincy armband this week, it is an inspired choice.
South African second round Investec Champions Cup fixtures
DHL Stormers v La Rochelle (Gqeberha, Saturday 3pm)
The Stormers have graduated quickly into becoming a rated team and, after winning so well overseas over the past two months, they will start strong favourites to win their first home game in the competition. The caveat of course is that Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium is not their spiritual home in the same way that DHL Stadium is, and generally the marketing of the Stormers has been directed at a Cape Town audience (‘Let’s make Gqeberha smile’ would be a new one if it was in circulation at all). The Stormers have lost only once at home in the pool phases of the Champions Cup, and it was at Saturday’s venue at the hands of another French team, Toulon, last December. The Stormers do have a team quite close to full strength, with Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu and Cobus Reinach coming in at halfback to add star quality to what has been an impressive, more than the sum of its parts campaign so far. Damian Willemse has a slight hamstring niggle and is being rested, but a lot is expected of the man who does wear the No 12 jersey on Saturday, young Jonathan Roche. If La Rochelle are at full strength, it could be a close game, but they are not expected to be and if they aren’t, then the Stormers should be strong favourites to win by a decent margin.
Prediction: Stormers to win by between 10 and 15.
Hollywoodbets Sharks v Saracens (Durban, Saturday 5.15pm)
This game was always targeted as a big one for the Sharks, with even in the pre-season some of the travails of an underperforming team being anticipated because of the fixture list they were presented with. What may not have been envisaged though was this game being played as the start of a new coaching tenure at Hollywoodbets Kings Park, with former Sharks and Springbok wing JP Pietersen coming in to replace John Plumtree, who has stepped aside to play an advisory role. We hear that one of Pietersen’s first decisive acts was to install Andre Esterhuizen as his captain, which might prove an inspired choice if true, as the Bok centre/flanker is, along with Ethan Hooker perhaps, the star Sharks player who most looks like someone who will be prepared to bleed for the cause. Pietersen knows a thing or two about the usefulness of good captains, for Nick Hatton did an outstanding job for him in two consecutive Currie Cup campaigns. Hatton was a standout as both a player and captain in last week’s understrength team that lost to Toulouse and on that evidence can’t be that far away from selection to the first-choice team. Provided they are at full strength, Saracens have plenty of pedigree and star quality and, given that they played together as a unit last week and the Sharks didn’t, they must start as slight favourites to win what could be a tight game.
Prediction: Saracens to win by less than 7.
Northampton v Vodacom Bulls (Northampton, Sunday 5.15pm)
Northampton have the wood over the Bulls and should continue to do so as the logistical challenge posed by having a tough and important URC derby scheduled for Durban just six days after this game north of the equator has made it impossible for Johan Ackermann to pick his strongest team. The Saints made it into last year’s final and although they were beaten there by Bordeaux, who conquered the Bulls at Loftus last week, that should just make them hungrier to succeed in this game. The Bulls do have a clutch of current Boks in front ranker Gerhard Steenekamp and Johan Grobbelaar on duty, and fullback Willie le Roux can probably also still be regarded as a relatively current international player. Then there are the likes of Nizaam Carr and Marcel Coetzee to support them. Cobus Wiese is in the second row alongside the highly promising JF van Heerden. So the Bulls aren’t completely without hope in the game, and can probably be emboldened by the thought that they have nothing to lose and can go all out. A Stormers second-string team took that attitude in an away game against Leicester a few seasons ago and came close to winning, so it may come down to the Bulls’ attitude.
Prediction: Northampton to win by more than 15.
Other weekend Investec Champions Cup fixtures
Leicester Tigers v Leinster (Leicester, Friday 10pm)
Clermont-Auvergne v Sale (Clermont, Saturday 5.15pm)
Bordeaux-Begles v Scarlets (Bordeaux, Saturday 7.30pm)
Munster v Gloucester (Limerick, Saturday 7.30pm)
Glasgow Warriors v Toulouse (Glasgow, Saturday 10pm)
Harlequins v Bayonne (London, Sunday 3pm)
Castres v Edinburgh (Castres, Sunday 3pm)