The Stormers have lost two home games this season and neither of them has been at their regular base of Cape Town Stadium but you won’t hear any of the coaches or players blaming the latest defeat to Toulon on them being 800km away from their home city.
I was at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium for their Investec Champions Cup clash with Toulon and the noise and energy of the 27,000 crowd matched anything I have experienced at Greenpoint. The Stormers are clearly popular in Gqeberha, for there were Stormers shirts everywhere, and the chants and the way the people supported John Dobson’s team was a carbon copy of Cape Town.
That they didn’t get to make Gqeberha smile like they have so often in Cape Town was one of the reasons the Stormers were so disappointed afterwards. It was another game they let get away from them by being too profligate, with the Christmas spirit having also enveloped them the previous week in Durban when they gave away way too many gifts to the Sharks.
While they once again overelaborated and in particular overdid the chip kick, and yet thumped their opponents at forward, you also had to give credit to the French team. It was that frightening intensity in the tackle that really undid the Stormers, with all three tries being given away by errors that also featured an action on Toulon’s part.
Not that the Stormers’ loss will stop the occasion from being remembered by those who were there. Of course it will, because people in the Eastern Cape are so starved of rugby, and yet there is clearly such a hunger for it.
I also attended the St George’s Park cricket Test between the Proteas and Sri Lanka. Yes, that format is not that well supported anywhere in the country outside Cape Town and Centurion, but it was hard to escape the feeling that part of the reason there was such a divergence in the numbers at the two events was because people in the region do get a good diet of top cricket events.
Apart from the SA20 games regular limited overs internationals are played at St George’s. Regarding rugby, there were some well-supported Test matches before Covid-19 arrived, and there was a fair turnout at a Stormers/Dragons United Rugby Championship game two years ago.
Otherwise there’s been nothing, and yet there is much evidence to suggest the appetite for rugby is huge. The Southern Kings had a decent final season in Super Rugby in 2017. I was at the stadium the day they beat the Sharks. The 40,000 capacity venue was nearly full. And according to local journalists, it was more than full, bursting at the seams, a few years before that when Eastern Province played a First Division Currie Cup final against the Mpumalanga Pumas.
That a region so hungry for rugby and which produces so many top players, particularly black players, does not have a team to support is a tragedy. There are so many players who do make it out of this fertile breeding ground for young rugby players, but they have to head to KZN or the Western Cape to make it.
Imagine how many more players might come through if they were able to pursue their rugby dreams by staying at home, near their families. It is impossible to quantify what SA rugby may have lost in potential gems who haven’t had their interest in the game piqued by having a top level team to support and a chance to regularly watch their heroes in the flesh, and also by being forced to live elsewhere if they want to make it.
The mismanagement that has led to this dire situation is well known, and the politics continues to undermine any chance of progress. But the Stormers might be able to at least partially solve the problem by making events such as Saturday’s more regular and properly absorbing Eastern Cape rugby into the franchise.
The clashes with events at their home stadium mean there are usually three games a season that have to be played away from the stadium. Instead of using Stellenbosch, with its limited capacity, as the alternative venue, why not play all those games in Gqeberha? After all, the people who go to Danie Craven Stadium would be the same ones who go to Cape Town games.
I put it to Stormers coach Dobson, and he is all for it. He and his skipper, Neethling Fouche, sitting next to him agreed that while Stellenbosch games have a provincial feel to them, the ones at Nelson Mandela Bay have a big occasion feel that is inspiring.
The first prize should be to get Eastern Cape rugby right and find a place for them to play as their own entity, but there are many hurdles. The Stormers representing both the Western and Eastern Cape seems a good second option and would be good for SA rugby on so many levels.
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