The DHL Stormers made it 14 wins in succession when they won their first away Vodacom United Rugby Championship match of the season 37-20 against Zebre Parma in Parma on Saturday but Salmaan Moerat’s team will be the first to admit they were well short of their best.
The Stormers have made a habit of clinching their bonus point try off the last move of the game and this time it was the last move but one, with Sacha Mngomezulu capping his fine performance in his first start for the Cape team with a try just over a minute from the end. When he kicked the conversion, his seventh successful kick from the tee in as many attempts, he completed a personal haul of 22 points.
That is as good a first start for your franchise as you can get, and the commentators weren’t short of understatement when afterwards one of them said “We are going to see a lot more of this man.” So we should, for Mngomezulu is still under-21 and in this game he showed maturity way beyond his years with his performance in what for him is the less familiar position of inside centre.
Apart from that last try, Mngomezulu was also the man who set up a fortuitous third try at a time when Zebre were coming back strongly and were trailing by just three points early in the second half. The Stormers centre kicked the ball from beneath a Zebre player who could not hold onto it and then followed up his own stabbing kick to grab the ball and send Herschel Jantjies in for the try.
Had the Stormers not scored that try they might well have struggled to win the game, let alone secure the four try bonus point, for the momentum had swung quite markedly against them in the second quarter of the game and either side of halftime, when the hosts scored 14 points without reply to almost cancel out what had been a 17-0 deficit just before the break.
The first try was on the stroke of halftime, with scrumhalf Chris Cook going over after some patient work from his teammates with the ball in the Stormers’ red zone, with Tiff Eden’s conversion cutting the deficit to 10. Tighthead prop Ion Neculai scored soon after the break and it was game on before Mngomezulu put through that kick that led to Jantjies’ score.
The Stormers had only themselves to blame for not being much further ahead at halftime and they should really have had the game wrapped up by then given their dominance of the early parts of the game.
It looked like they might run out a similarly one-sided win to the one they scored against the Italian team in Stellenbosch last year when they rumbled over for their first try off a driving maul in just the fifth minute. They were straight back into Zebre territory after that, but that was when the problem areas started to surface, most notably the inaccuracy of the lineout, something that plagued them for much of last season.
The Stormers won a plethora of penalties early in the game but were just unable to convert, with the Zebre jumpers getting in between the Stormers jumpers and making it a difficult afternoon for young hooker Andre-Hugo Venter. It was indeed a much changed up team for the Stormers in comparison to last week against Edinburgh, with several players getting their first starts of the season as coach John Dobson used the opportunity to extend his depth.
It wasn’t just the newness of some of the combinations that contributed to the sloppy performance, however, as some of the stars of the side, in particular Springboks Damian Willemse and Evan Roos, were quite anonymous. In Roos’ case it is time to perhaps ask what has happened to the form that made him the URC player of the year last season, for apart from his brilliant try against Connacht in the opening game he has been pretty ordinary for the Stormers.
The Stormers will know they need to improve when they get to Wales next week but at the same time they banked another full house of points so after three games they boast a perfect record and there can’t be much quibbling with that.
Scores
DHL Stormers 37 – Tries:Junior Pokomela, Neethling Fouche, Herschel Jantjies and Sacha Mngomezulu; Conversions:Sacha Mngomezulu 4; Penalties:Sacha Mngomezulu 3.
Zebre Parma 20 – Tries:Chris Cook and Ion Nacalui; Conversions:Tiff Eden 2; Penalty:Tiff Eden 2.