'Deon’s devastated. It’s a serious bicep injury, which will require surgery. It’s an emotional change room.'
As much as the Stormers are thrilled with a second whitewash victory in three matches, director of rugby John Dobson said there were “a lot of tears in the change room” after their 34-0 thrashing of Scarlets in Llanelli on Friday.
The significant away win followed the Stormers’ 35-0 drubbing of defending champions Leinster and 26-10 win over Ospreys, both in Cape Town.
Dobson said that while the bonus-point win put them top of the United Rugby Championship table and sets them up well for remaining tour matches against Zebre and Munster, serious injuries to Sazi Sandi and Deon Fourie dampened the mood in camp.
Fourie out again
Springbok loose forward Fourie, 39, was out for months after breaking his leg last season. Now just three matches into the URC and he’s suffered another severe setback.
“Deon’s in tears. Deon’s devastated. It’s a serious bicep injury, which will require surgery,” the Stormers boss said.
“So he will go home tonight. It’s an emotional change room. As much as the win is pleasing, it shows how tight the team is that they are so upset about Deon.”
Dobson said Sandi will receive scans for his injury, but for now, he is out of action.
“That’s three really good tightheads in Frans [Malherbe], Neethling [Fouche] and Sazi unavailable and I don’t think any team can cater for that in their roster.
“But luckily we’ve got a great scrum culture and guys like Zach Porthen is coming through, we’ve got Hencus van Wyk, Corné Welbach, and Oli Kebble can swing, so we should be able to keep our scrum culture going.”
Stormers discipline lets them down
Dobson said the team largely stuck to their game plan around set-piece, ball-carrying and winning territory through the kicking game, winning the match five tries to nil.
Evan Roos, Paul de Villiers, Ruben van Heerden, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu and Imad Khan all scored on the night.
“I think our dominance was such that we should have got away by more earlier, which was probably the story of the last three games.
“I thought we could have got awarded more scrums by the referee and we lost three lineouts in the first half, which is probably the reason it was closer than it should have been. But the biggest concern was our discipline, but the discipline to stick to the plan – discipline in defence was absolutely wonderful.
“The obvious discipline, like the two yellow cards, and the opening penalty reversed. That was really poor.”
Dobson referred to the card shown to Feinberg-Mngomezulu for pulling his opponent onto the ground during an off-the-ball altercation. The other went to Ben-Jason Dixon for a crocodile roll.
