Stormers boss: Fans expected 70 points, but we’re satisfied with Dragons victory

Stormers director of rugby John Dobson said their incredible results recently had created high expectations of how the match against the United Rugby Championship’s last-placed team would go, but he was more than happy to take a win by any margin.

The Stormers still crushed the Dragons six tries to two (final score 48–12) in their penultimate league phase match at Cape Town Stadium on Saturday. However, it was the Stormers’ fifth bonus-point win in a row and Dobson said after their 56–5 victory over Benetton in their previous match, “everyone” had expected them to score at least 70 points against the Dragons who have only won one game so far this season.

The win, with tries from Wandisile Simelane (two), Seabelo Senatla, Stefan Ungerer, Damian Willemse (making his 100th cap) and Paul de Wet, allowed the Stormers to move one place up to fifth position on the table before their game against Cardiff next week – their last before the play-offs at the end of the month.

Stormers had ‘trickier’ game

“Overall, I think we did what we wanted to do in terms of trying to retain some elements of how we played against Benetton,” Dobson said. “It’s always going to be much trickier. A game like this, the conditions, the opposition, that stuff.”

The Stormers boss said the game against Benetton set the standard around the small details but he didn’t see any less intensity against Dragons.

He said if there were any criticisms to make against his side it would be the mistakes committed in the first half. “Six or seven put-ins [in the first half] is too much. But defensively, we were really good.”

He said people probably thought after Benetton the Stormers would score 70 points against Dragons but despite these first-half errors, it was a “good performance”.

Stormers turn their fortunes around

“A month ago we wouldn’t have thought the Stormers would make the play-offs with a game to spare, so I am very pleased and grateful to the team for the way they stood up.

“Now it becomes who [we play in a play-off]. But we can’t engineer anything.”

He was right about the turnaround in the fortunes at the Cape Town side. In March, the Stormers sat in 12th position and said they just about needed to win all their remaining games at that point to finish in the top eight.

Dobson said their “project” is to win the URC and become a giant of world rugby, which they are doing.

The coach commended loose forward Marcel Theunissen for his man of the match performance against the Dragons. “He has an incredible work rate. Lineout-wise, he’s magic. He doesn’t look like a traditional lineout seven but he is explosive. He is special.”