Chastened Stormers coach John Dobson has apologised for letting a sellout crowd of 52,000 home supporters down and vowed his team will bounce back from a painful 30-19 defeat against the Sharks in Cape Town on Saturday.
The loss ended the Stormers’ eight-match unbeaten run in the United Rugby Championship (URC) and left the Cape side with work to do on the training pitch before Saturday’s return fixture in Durban (kickoff 5pm).
After the setback, the Stormers slipped to second place on the URC log behind the Glasgow Warriors, who beat Italian side Zebre 26-21 on Saturday.
It was a groundbreaking victory for the Sharks, who earned their first URC win in Cape Town after four previous defeats at Cape Town Stadium.
“I’ll tell you what feels horrible: that the people of Cape Town have come out, and we produced comfortably our worst performance of the season, and it wasn’t even a thriller at the end,” Dobson said.
“From that point of view the loss feels terrible.
“But we’ve got a plan for next week in Durban which we’d already made before this result, and we’ll be better.
“The silver lining of a dark cloud is we can put things right in Durban on Saturday.
“There is an element, and captain Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu talked about it, which is that our bogey [unbeaten record] is off our back.
“I don’t want to say we beat ourselves because the Sharks were very good.
“They were well organised and had plans and played with passion.
“Had we addressed some areas of our game, the score could have been in our favour
“We will be back next week in Durban.
“It was a curious game, and often when we lose games, you think we did not work hard enough.
“But I could not fault the effort or the desire to win.”
Dobson rued his team’s lack of discipline and inability to impose themselves on the Sharks.
“Both sides of the lineout were poor; the penalties we conceded — that and the discipline,” he said.
“If you look at the URC stats before this round, we were the number one lineout, number one maul and number one scrum.
“But today you didn’t get that picture.”
Feinberg-Mngomezulu said the Sharks had punished the Stormers for errors on a difficult day for the home side.
“The one place where we can tap ourselves on the back is that we got the entries into the 22, so that’s one box ticked,” he said.
“I think the difference today [Saturday] was when you get momentum and gain entries, you usually smash and grab a few points from there or put the team under pressure via penalties or cards, and then the energy is reinjected to you.
“It wasn’t a thing of losing a ball on the 22 or failing on entry. It was failing on entry and being put right back in our half.
“It’s very dejecting from an energy point of view.
“It was an unfortunate day like that, but I don’t want to say we did not get the rub of the green.
“I think the Sharks got the better of some situations, and instead of getting a bit of a one-up on us, they got a five-up on us, and we ended up burning ourselves.
“Kudos to the Sharks, and we are not happy now, but we will be fine.”
Scorers:
Stormers 19: Tries: Damian Willemse (2), Penalty Try (worth seven points); Conversion: Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu.
Sharks 30: Tries: Jason Jenkins, Jaco Williams, Phepsi Buthelezi, and Andre Esterhuizen. Conversions: Jordan Hendrikse (2). Penalties: Hendrikse (2).
• In URC matches played on Friday, the Lions and Ospreys drew 24-24 and the Bulls beat Edinburgh 19-17.
The Herald
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