When you start a competition with eight wins, you place a lot of credit in the bank – and that has proved the case for the DHL Stormers, whose statement performance at Loftus has drastically changed their outlook as they head into the final third of the Vodacom URC season.
Stormers director of rugby John Dobson would be the first to admit that a loss to the Vodacom Bulls in the final game of a derby phase that didn’t go well for the Cape team would have been a massive dent to his team’s hopes. It would have left them lagging in the race for a top-four finish that secures home ground advantage at the start of the Finals Series at the end of May, not to mention the blow to the confidence that would have resulted from suffering a fourth successive defeat in the competition.
Just as violence begets violence, so defeat can breed a losing habit if you keep losing. The Stormers did have the safety net of having a run of home games against overseas teams to come, but now, because of the way they dealt with the Bulls challenge in Pretoria, they go into those games with momentum and with confidence.
ULSTER EMERGING AS A BIG THREAT
They also head into Sunday’s clash with the Dragons at DHL Stadium back in the top two on the log, although there are two other teams, Ulster and Leinster, who are level with them on the same number of points. Ulster, who themselves made a statement if you consider that their big away win over Edinburgh on Friday was without key players who have become fixtures in a rapidly improving Ireland team, are a real threat and the Stormers have to play them in Belfast in the final fortnight of the league phase.
Leinster were seen off with relative ease when they came to Cape Town understrength at the start of the competition and struggled initially but will be expected to pick up momentum in the remaining part of the season. What makes Leinster and Ulster potentially more problematic to the Stormers’ aspirations than the current log leaders Glasgow Warriors and the other nearest challenging team for a top-four spot, Cardiff and Munster, is that neither of the two Irish teams still have to come to South Africa.
OTHER SA TEAMS CAN DO STORMERS, AND THEMSELVES, A FAVOUR
That’s not the case for the other three, and the Stormers will be hoping the other local teams join them in denting the challenge of those sides, with both Munster and Cardiff set to fall away from challenging for a place in the top-four bracket if they lose their games against the Sharks and Bulls in Durban and Pretoria respectively over the next two rounds.
Of course the Bulls winning against Cardiff and Munster (that’s the order they play them in) will also help themselves, for they are still not completely out of the race for a top-four spot themselves. The whole complexion of that race though has been changed by the Loftus result, where the Stormers got five points and the Bulls none - what could have been a one or two-point gap between the two teams had the Bulls won is now 11.
Which does make the Stormers emphatically South Africa’s best hope in the URC this season, and on the evidence of their comprehensive win in Pretoria, one that frankly could have been a lot more one-sided on the end scoreboard than it was, they have a realistic hope. For any pack that can dominate the Bulls at Loftus like the Stormers did should have a chance of doing that to almost anyone.
HAVING NEL BACK MADE BIG DIFFERENCE TO STORMERS
There was a lot written and said about the period when the Stormers lost three in a row to fellow South African teams but the line that there was something inherently wrong and unfixable about the Cape side was always wide of the mark. It required little things to be fixed, and perhaps one big thing in the form of attitude.
It was not a coincidence that the Stormers’ statement win coincided with the return of Ruhan Nel, who led the Stormers to their successes early in the season where adherence to basics and control was pretty much the focus. Veteran leader Deon Fourie was there to aid him in leading the side against the Bulls, and the result was a much more controlled and pragmatic approach to the looseness that was particularly evident in the two losses to the Sharks.
The gift try conceded by Warrick Gelant, when he took his time about dotting down a ball and the Sharks’ pacy wing Jaco Williams beat him to it, that effectively turned a close game with a few minutes to go into one where the Sharks won with something to spare in Durban was a case in point when it came to the Stormers’ attitude at that point.
At Loftus it was the Bulls who looked like they were stepping back into previous bad habits by playing too much rugby in their own half, being too rushed, and relying less on the directness and better balance between forward power and pace and skill at the back that turned around their season following a horrible run of consecutive defeats.
STORMERS’ CONTROL AND BACK TO BASICS FOCUS CAME UP TRUMPS
The Stormers by contrast were light years away from their Cape Town performance against the Sharks, delivering a tactical masterclass, one in which the Bok flyhalf Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu marshalled in classy fashion while the tactical game of Gelant was also much improved.
It would have helped Feinberg-Mngomezulu to have Damian Willemse, who won the official man of the match award, and the experienced Nel outside him, and there was also a much-improved performance from the prodigiously talented but hitherto underperforming Suleiman Hartzenberg. But it was really the Stormers’ forwards that won the game, and it was the pack that ensured that the Stormers had all the momentum in the second half apart from the unlucky bounce that led to Zac Burger’s try. So emphatically better than the Bulls were the Stormers forwards that it really rendered moot any questions over whether the Bulls played the right game.
They were never going to beat the Stormers when the Stormers' forwards were in the form they were in at Loftus and that is something that the Stormers should think about as they plot their way forward. It appeared that they placed pressure on themselves to chase the bling in the quest to satisfy an assumed Cape rugby DNA during December and January, but Loftus showed that there is another more sure way of making Cape Town smile.
That’s not to say they should put away every attacking quiver in their bow, but just that they do have the resources, even given the injuries to two star locks in Salmaan Moerat and Ruben van Heerden, to win with a more controlled style.
Weekend Vodacom URC results
Edinburgh 19 Ulster 40
Connacht 31 Scarlets 14
Vodacom Bulls 19 DHL Stormers 32
URC LOG STANDINGS AFTER 12 GAMES

Glasgow Warriors 45 points; 2. DHL Stormers 41; 3. Ulster 41; 4. Leinster 41; 5. Cardiff 40; 6. Munster 39; 7. Lions 33; 8. Vodacom Bulls 30; 9. Connacht 30; 10. Ospreys 29; 11. Hollywoodbets Sharks 24; 12. Edinburgh 23; 13. Benetton 23; 14. Dragons 20; 15. Scarlets 16; 16. Zebre 12.