Stormers and Bulls are the pre-season predators

13 February 2017 - 18:24 By Craig Ray
subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now
Robbie Fleck (Head Coach) during the DHL Stormers training session at HPC, Bellville on May 24, 2016 in Cape Town, South Africa. File photo
Robbie Fleck (Head Coach) during the DHL Stormers training session at HPC, Bellville on May 24, 2016 in Cape Town, South Africa. File photo
Image: Ashley Vlotman/Gallo Images

If pre-season form is anything to go by the Stormers and the Bulls will be South Africa’s leading Super Rugby contenders‚ but reading too much into scores at this stage of the year is often misleading.

The Stormers won all three of their Super Rugby warm-up games – beating the Cheetahs 43-7 in Harare‚ the SWD Eagles 57-14 in George and the Lions 57-40 at Newlands – to lay down a marker of sorts.

The Bulls beat the Lions 38-17 in Harare and the Chiefs 28-7 in Brisbane and they also played in the Brisbane 10s‚ which was more about fitness than anything.

That fact that the Stormers conceded five tries against the Lions underlines that the match was about attacking plays rather than defence. Every match has had a specific focus‚ so it’s difficult to gauge exactly how good each team as been.

In terms of pure results the Stormers are the early-season pacesetters along with the Bulls‚ but gauging a season on pre-season results is superficial.

Lions coach Johan Ackermann was seemingly unconcerned about leaking nine tries against the Stormers.

“I am very excited‚” Ackermann said. “There are things that we did not do [against the Stormers]‚ that we want to use in the competition. We hid away a lot of things‚ so don’t worry.

“We first have to clean our own house and start with week one. We just conceded too many points and while you expect it to be a bit more unstructured in a warm-up game‚ you simply don’t want to concede 50 points.

“No doubt we will have to pay attention to defence in the next two weeks‚ before we start the competition.

“At times we showed good intensity and at times not‚ but keep in mind some of these players have not played for a long time‚ so we are very happy that we had an opportunity at this level.”

And that sums up the situation for all the teams. The Cheetahs suffered two heavy defeats to the Stormers and Sharks but coach Franco Smith is not panicking because he knows that results are only at about item 10 on a 10-point pre-season checklist.

“If you play too many warm-up games it becomes a 20-match campaign instead of a 15 or 16-game season‚” Smith said. “Twenty is too much.”

Cheetahs vice captain Francois Uys also wasn’t reading too much into their defeats.

“The main goal was to give each and every player in the squad as much game time as possible‚” Uys said.

“Apart from one or two concussions not too much harm was done to the players‚ so that’s a positive.

“It was also a good learning curve for the younger guys in the squad. We played against two very good teams in the Stormers and the Sharks who played pretty much their full strength teams‚ so we’ll take that forward.”

The Bulls will take heart from beating the Chiefs last week but the most important aspects of the match was that key players such as flyhalf Handré Pollard enjoyed game time and that they came through relatively injury free.

- TMG Digital/TMG Sport

subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now