Everybody loves an underdog story so perhaps it isn’t surprising that the Stormers appear to have experienced a popularity surge, even outside the Cape, during their United Rugby Championship (URC) campaign.
Coach John Dobson has helped create the narrative. At every opportunity he refers to his side as a “little team” and loves to reference his side’s lack of financial resources when compared with the Sharks and Bulls. But it has also been the style of rugby they played en route to winning the SA Shield that has won them fans.
There was a time not long ago where the Stormers were a set-piece team. In other words, they built everything around set-piece dominance. In the last Super Rugby season before the arrival of Covid-19, the Stormers were very much that, with everything appearing to revolve around what the Springboks did at the World Cup in Japan a few months before that.
It was understandable that Dobson should adopt that approach for at the time he did have what wasn’t far short of a full Bok pack playing for him. Siya Kolisi was still the Stormers captain and Bongi Mbonambi was still packing down between World Cup winning front-row teammates Steven Kitshoff and Frans Malherbe. Pieter-Steph du Toit was on the blindside flank.
While the Stormers were revolving everything around the forwards the Sharks, who had lost several forward bruisers to overseas clubs in the 2019/2020 off season, were doing the opposite — they were playing a vibrant, attacking brand of rugby that had at its heart the breakdown-contesting ability of open side flanks James Venter and Dylan Richardson.
Subsequent to that, and the Covid-19 lockdown, there has been a complete reversal. Kolisi and Mbonambi have moved to Durban, and because of Kolisi’s presence Sharks coach Sean Everitt has been unable to accommodate the Venter mould of fetcher that he once said he would never do without. It would be a big and controversial call to leave out the Bok captain.
The Stormers by contrast started employing in Deon Fourie and Nama Xaba the fetcher type flank they previously didn’t have, and they are now the SA team that is attracting rave reviews for their exciting, dynamic playing style. The Bulls, who have Marcel Coetzee, aren’t far behind, but the Sharks are constantly being criticised for their lack of attacking shape.
The Durban team has become so reliant on the scrum to spearhead their drive for victory that I sent a WhatsApp message to a mate very early in their game against Ulster proclaiming that it wouldn’t be the Sharks’ night. That was because it was clear Ulster were fronting them in the set-piece.
On those days, what else do they have? Not a lot, and while they did show what they might be capable of when the game was already lost and they scored two late tries, the reality is that their three points losing margin in Belfast was flattering.
One of the main ingredients of the Stormers’ success, and they have been successful if you compare where they are to the pre-competition expectation, is the high work-rate of the forwards and their urgency and hunger at the breakdowns. The Sharks were pedestrian and labouring when they took the ball into the breakdowns at the Kingspan Stadium and Kolisi was anonymous.
The Bok captain was brilliant at international level in 2021, but it is hard to remember when he has really excelled at the next level down. Though he is a World Cup-winning captain, it is very hard to see, from the viewpoint of playing style, the rugby grounds for luring Kolisi to Durban.
To be blunt, there weren’t any rugby reasons for it other than that Roc Nation, who manage Kolisi and work with the Sharks’ American investors, wanted him to move away from the franchise they had initially tried to broker a deal with and that treated them shabbily.
I was a big supporter of the Americans taking over at the Stormers and in my eyes the Stormers, well though they have done, are still more West Ham than Liverpool or Manchester City in terms of their financial capabilities. And that will hurt them if they don’t find an equity partner soon, as has been evidenced by their recent hooker and scrumhalf crisis.
To compete consistently in the URC and the Champions Cup, the Stormers are going to need to buy depth and they need money to do that. At the same time though the Durban example is telling us if you are going to have equity partners that call the shots, you must ensure they have a feel for the game.
Money can buy you players, but it doesn’t buy you culture. Their culture is everything for the Stormers whereas it is hard to escape the feeling that the Sharks have it all to do in that regard and have regressed from the youthful, exciting vibrancy Everitt was creating in his first season in charge.
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