After a stunning 10 game winning start to the season, the Stormers have fallen into a rut with three losses in their last four matches.
Stormers Director of Rugby John Dobson said that there has to be a change in behaviour from his side, after they received a dose of humble pie from the Sharks, who clinched a first ever United Rugby Championship (URC) double over their Cape rivals in Durban on Sunday.
After a stunning eight game winning start to the season came to a crashing end in Cape Town last weekend, when the Sharks stunned the Stormers 30-19, the Durban side followed that up with an equally impressive 36-24 win at Kings Park on Saturday.
It has thus seen the Stormers slip from the top of the URC log to third, and has turned that invincible aura into one of fragility all in the space of a month.
In total the Stormers had won 10 games on the trot, including two in the Champions Cup, before a fringe team suffered a heavy defeat to Harlequins in London last month.
Poor form
Back at full strength they bounced back with an unconvincing home Champions Cup win over Leicester Tigers, but followed that up with the two disappointing losses to the Sharks, meaning they have lost three of their last four games.
Dobson praised the Sharks, who in contrast went into the Stormers games in poor form, with them sitting 14th on the URC log before their coastal derby double, but then played with the confidence of a winning team to pick up two convincing and deserved wins.
“Credit must go to the Sharks, they beat us properly over both weeks. Our discipline was poor, and our set-piece definitely let us down,” said Dobson.
“I thought their aerial game was really good, and they played with a very clear plan that worked for them. The most destroying part (tonight) is that the same things that went wrong last week, went wrong this week.
“Five-metre lineouts not converted, giving penalties away at mauls which led to some of the discipline stuff. So to fix that, there needs to be a change in behaviour. The Sharks plan worked again and we couldn’t respond. It was really poor from us and I feel bad for our supporters.”
Perfect opportunity
Dobson admitted that playing them back-to-back was the perfect opportunity for them to fix what had gone wrong in the first encounter, but despite strong starts to the first and second halves, they largely did what they had done in the previous match.
“Playing them back-to-back was nice in the sense that we saw what went wrong last week, and we thought we could fix that. Other than our two starts to the halves, it felt very similar to last week,” said Dobson.
“But I think we were marginally better (in Durban). We didn’t win the contestable (kicking) game as much as we wanted to. And If you are on 11 penalties after 20 minutes, that will include a card.
“If you play for 20 minutes with just seven forwards and Damian Willemse must pack down on flank, it won’t be good enough. To me, it was our discipline, the lack of conversion (of chances) and stopping them from five meters out. It was (all) a problem last week as well.”
