Stormers to take lessons from huge La Rochelle win into rest of season

The Stormers will be taking valuable lessons out of their nail-biting 21-20 Champions Cup victory over defending champs La Rochelle at Cape Town Stadium over the weekend and will hope that it will now kick-start their season.

It has been a difficult campaign for the Stormers so far, having not playing particularly well, and it was another average performance against the French giants on Saturday. The difference, however, was that they emerged with the win.

The Stormers started their season with two wins in the United Rugby Championship (URC) over the Lions and Scarlets, before heading on the road and losing all four of their games on their European tour.

On their return to South Africa they picked up an unconvincing win over Zebre, then sent a second-string side to England for their opening Champions Cup match, where their back-up brigade impressed but ultimately went down 35-26.

Crunch clash

That made the La Rochelle game vitally important as another loss could have ended their chances of progressing in the competition, while it could also have had a negative impact on the players.

It looked like that might be the case after the visitors took an early lead in the match and never relinquished it, while a try with three minutes remaining looked to have sewn up the win, only for the TMO to catch foul play in the build-up and chalk off the try.

This allowed the Stormers to stunningly fight back to score a try with seconds left, and flyhalf Manie Libbok nailed the pressure touch-line conversion to give them the lead for the first time after the full-time hooter and an incredible win.

“The relief is massive. They are a really good team and that was a step up from the URC. I’ll be honest, those breakdowns were fierce. It was a bit of an eye opener for us,” Stormers coach John Dobson admitted after the match.

“We didn’t play cleverly. I thought we got into an arm wrestle with them which you clearly don’t want to do. The plan was to counterattack more which we didn’t do.

“The fact that we have won an arm wrestle against them is amazing. So credit to our fight, but I don’t think we played very well at all.”

Galvanising win

Although it was another lacklustre showing, the win should galvanise the Stormers players and give them the perfect momentum heading into a massive two weeks which includes huge home URC derbies against the Bulls and Sharks.

The fact that his side can get much better was not lost on Dobson and he admitted that the important result could lift them heading into the Bulls match.

“When you think that we were about five-and-a-half or six out of 10 and we beat La Rochelle [it bodes well],” said Dobson.

“The upside is that we can get much better. This keeps us alive in the competition and I hope people in South Africa realise what the Champions Cup is about. Because that is a really tough rugby team that we just played.

“It is a world class team (the Bulls) we are playing next weekend. We will have to be a lot better than we were against La Rochelle.

“We will have to step up in terms of how we play our game model, which we didn’t execute. But it sets us up nicely for next week.”