The Stormers will need to be at their best if they want to end a poor run of results against their bogey team Ospreys on Friday night.
After a superb start to their season with a bonus point win over the competition defending champs, the Stormers want to back that performance up by picking up another good win in their United Rugby Championship (URC) encounter with Ospreys at the Cape Town Stadium on Friday night (7pm).
A 35-0 thrashing of Irish giants Leinster gave them the perfect start, but now they come up against their bogey team, as they have only beaten the Welsh side once in the URC, while losing twice and drawing once in their four matches so far.
Director of Rugby John Dobson admitted that Ospreys’ impressive performance against the Bulls at Loftus last weekend, pushing them hard in a 53-40 loss, helped keep his side’s feet firmly on the ground and prepared for what could be a tricky clash.
“It (complacency) would be a concern had it not been for the fact that we saw how well the Ospreys played in Pretoria. We know our record against the Ospreys over the last three games is a draw, loss, loss so that’s not really a recipe for complacency,” explained Dobson.
“The feeling is one of desperation to back up last week, because you don’t want it to be a fluke, you want it to be who we are, so that’s the challenge for the guys.”
Away tour
After Friday night’s game the Stormers head off on a three match away tour to Wales and Italy, and having been poor travellers in the URC, they know how important it will be to leave with two good wins and strong momentum.
“If we were to get through this five game spell with four (wins) out of five, we’d be in a pretty nice position. But if something went wrong tomorrow (Friday) then we realise we have to win every game on the road to get that goal. So it’s very important (result) from that point of view,” said Dobson.
For the match, the Stormers made three changes to the starting side that thrashed Leinster, with scrumhalf Dewaldt Devenage coming in to start in his 100th appearance for the franchise, and Stefan Ungerer moving to the bench.
In the forwards Marcel Theunissen and Connor Evans come into the loose trio, with Paul de Villiers and Ben-Jason Dixon dropping onto the bench, where they will hope to make a big impact as part of the ‘bomb squad’ in the second half.
“It is a proper bomb squad. Our pack roster is a really fantastic one at the moment, especially if you consider the players unavailable. So this was deliberate from us as we want to have that (powerful) sort of impact in the last 20 or 30 minutes,” added Dobson.
