By Gavin Rich.
The DHL Stormers always had the most to gain from the two rounds of Vodacom United Rugby Championship derby action over the festive week and they are halfway to emerging from it with their best case scenario having been achieved.
After their comprehensive 37-27 bonus point win over the Vodacom Bulls at the start of the Christmas weekend, the Stormers are five points clear at the top of the South African Shield – and they have a game in hand on the second placed Bulls. The Stormers can capitalise further on their advantage by beating the Emirates Lions in Cape Town on New Year’s Eve, while the Bulls are up against it as they head to Durban for their game against what should be a full strength Cell C Sharks team.
If the Stormers win on Saturday and the Bulls lose, the Cape team’s advantage over the chasing pack will be quite a marked one, with their coach John Dobson also targeting the 8 January clash with Glasgow Warriors in Glasgow as for the first time he starts looking properly at the URC log and his team’s outlook for the remainder of the competition.
“The way we see it, if we beat the Lions and then beat Glasgow then we will have a bit of leeway later in the competition when it comes to team selection and how we manage the players,” said Dobson.
“We are obviously very happy with our log position as it is, but we don’t want to ruin all the good work and the advantage we have created for ourselves by now slackening off and losing to the Lions.”
The gap between the Stormers, who are second on the overall log, and the top placed team, Leinster, is now eight points, which has been cut by one due to Leinster not picking up a full five in their narrow win over Munster in the Irish derby on Boxing Day. But what is significant there is that the Stormers do have a game in hand over the Irish team, as they do over the third placed Bulls.
FRIGHTENING INTENSITY IN CAPE TOWN GAME
For the Bulls, the loss to the Stormers would have been made more difficult to swallow for their director of rugby Jake White and his players by the fact that they put so much emphasis on the rematch of the 2022/23 final. White fielded second string teams in both Champions Cup games so that his first choice players would be up for the Stormers clash.
And they were up for it, with the derby delivering an at times frightening degree of physicality and intensity, something that will make both coaches glad that there is an eight day gap until the New Year double round of derbies. The commitment and passion of the two sides, both of whom made it clear they had no intention of budging or giving up ground, was light years different to what we’d seen on television from Durban earlier in the evening, where the Sharks were always the dominant team.
The Stormers could not have dreamed of a more appreciated Christmas present than the five log points they picked up on a night where their arch-rivals and nearest challengers on the Shield table picked up none. And the Bulls face a tough month, with White perfectly justified in expressing his concerns about the travel entailed in being part of both the URC and the Heineken Champions Cup.
“I worked it out this morning, in the next month we have just nine days free for training, the rest we are traveling,” said White. “You have to remember that with a lot of the places we play, it is not just a case of pitching up at the airport and heading to the nearest hotel. There are long bus journeys, sometimes four hours or more.”
TOUGH MONTH AWAITS WHITE’S MEN
It is the challenge faced by his team both on the field and off the field that drove White’s motivation to beat the Stormers, but now he has to change that focus to the Sharks, who will be smarting from their under-strength defeat to the Bulls at Loftus at the start of the international window.
The Bulls don’t boast a good record in Durban over the past few seasons, and if you add their three consecutive defeats in Cape Town to the Stormers, you could almost suggest that coastal games are becoming a bit of a bogey for them. And they know that the Sharks are almost certain to call in the likes of Eben Etzebeth, who was rested against the Lions, for this game.
The turn-out at the first two festive season games was impressive, with DHL Stadium attracting a crowd of 30 000 and HollywoodBets Kings Park about 3 000 fewer than that. You have to remember though that a Stormers/Bulls derby always draws a big crowd, and word from the Western Province marketing side of things is that there hasn’t been nearly the same level of interest for the New Year’s Eve game against the Lions.
What could help boost the interest in that game though is the flair and panache that the Stormers are bringing to their game. Although the modern scourge of games being too drawn out because of TMO/refereeing discussions, scrum resets and the other blights on the sport, such as another card for an accidental head clash – the first half lasted nearly an hour – were still very much present, being at the stadium was an entertaining experience because of the aesthetic appeal of the rugby that was produced.
The Stormers’ three second half tries were spectacularly executed and it is hard to imagine that there weren’t at least some people who were undecided about the 31 December game but made up their minds to return during that heady less than 10 minutes when the Cape team effectively won the game by scoring 21 points through three converted tries.
OVERSEAS RESULTS HELPED SA TEAMS
The overseas results from the weekend games should mostly have pleased the South African teams. For instance, although a Connacht win over Ulster would have been preferable, the currently third placed team did drop a point in the sense that they never managed a bonus point. So the Stormers’ advantage over them has been increased to four points.
Leinster managed four in their hard fought win with an under-strength team in the Limerick derby, but Edinburgh dropped points in their narrow defeat to Glasgow in the Scottish derby. There is still a sizeable gap between the top four and the rest – seven between fourth placed Bulls and fifth placed Cardiff – but there is a log jam among the teams, placed sixth to 14th, contesting for places in the playoffs and next year’s Champions Cup.
Sixth placed Glasgow are level on points with the Sharks, Lions, Benetton and Edinburgh, with Munster one point further back. But even the Dragons, 14th on 17 points and seven behind those teams, are still in with a sniff at making it into the top eight.
Weekend Vodacom United Rugby Championship Results
Cell C Shark 37 Emirates Lions 10
DHL Stormers 37 Vodacom Bulls 27
Connacht 20 Ulster 22
Glasgow Warriors 16 Edinburgh 10
Benetton 38 Zebre 5
Dragons 24 Cardiff Rugby 29
Ospreys 34 Scarlets 14
Munster 19 Leinster 20.