Dobson confident they will find Kitshoff’s replacement in their pipeline, if he leaves Stormers

While the loss of veteran Springboks loosehead prop Steven Kitshoff would be massive for the Stormers, coach John Dobson is consoled by the thrilling young talent in Western Province’s pipeline.

Kitshoff, whose contract with the Stormers is set to lapse after next year’s Rugby World Cup in France, is strongly linked with a move to the Capetonians’ United Rugby Championship (URC) and Irish side, Ulster.

Dobson didn’t deny the possibility of losing the player to Ulster, but said they were going to talk to the player after their 16-all draw against Ospreys in Wales on Friday.

During the past few years, Stormers have been losing their top talents such as Warrick Gelant, who moved to France’s Racing 92 at the end of last season.

However, the Stormers have managed to find perfect replacements that helped them to the URC title in the previous campaign.

“We’ve got a school system which is absolutely great and in the Western Province, which is our province, I think we’ve got 10 in the top 20 South African (rugby) schools,” Dobson said after the Ospreys draw.

“At Western Province, (in the players that are) coming out of matric this year there will be eight locks 2 metres tall and we will keep three or four and a couple will go up to the Bulls and the Sharks.

“That is a massive bailout because it is always exhausting that people always come to shop at us.

“There are two young locks in their 20s and they probably should have been on this trip (European tour). We have got a golden generation if you look at Sacha Mngomezulu in the SA U20 and Suleiman Hartzenberg.

“So we are here talking about Kitshoff going to Ulster and who is going to be the next guy (from the pipeline) that makes it a little bit different. We’ve got three universities in the Varsity Cup and we’ve got all these schools and also in our province we’ve got 112 clubs,” he said.

“I was worried about us this season because we lost a few guys and more guys got into the national team, guys like Gelant. But with the guys that are coming through we got more depth than we had last season.”  

Dobson was not disappointed with the draw against Ospreys considering the match was played under atrocious weather conditions in Swansea.

“We couldn't see the field from where we were,” Dobson said.

I thought we did well in the conditions until the last few minutes. I thought it was one of our better performances tonight, given the conditions. We scored one of our classic tries, which was nice to see. We're satisfied.”

Dobson will be looking to work on a few areas such as line-outs where they weren’t sharp enough.

The Stormers travel to the Welsh capital, where they play Cardiff Rugby on Saturday (8.35pm).

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