Fleck looking for growth amongst youngsters
Fleck, who described the 2017 season as his "official first year" as head coach of the Cape franchise, introduced a number of youngsters to Super Rugby in 2016 and he is hoping that their exposure to top flight rugby will pay off during this year's tournament.
"Exposing some of the youngsters like we did last year does help," said Fleck.
"If you think about it there was [JD] Schickerling, Jean-Luc du Plessis and Daniel du Plessis – these are young kids who had their first year in Super Rugby. [Leolin] Zas was still under 21 last year and playing in Super Rugby, so there is a little bit of continuity there for us.
"Those guys are all a year older and a little more experienced and they have been exposed to Super Rugby. There is some form of continuity there, but this is certainly a new campaign.
"This is my official first year of my three-year term. We have made lots of changes, professionally in terms of the way we want to play.
"The players have adapted to those changes and it has been tough for them and tough for the rest of the management, but I believe it is the hard work that we have been putting in and a little bit of continuity that is going to help.
"It is a young side and there are challenges, but these guys are certainly keen to play – to play the best teams in the competition and beat the best teams. It is going to be a process and I guess no one wants to hear that word. No one wants to hear 'give us a year or two' because people want results.
"We are a result-driven management, a result-driven team and we will live and die by that sword and we are going to do whatever it takes to make the fans proud of us."
Before they get the Super Rugby campaign underway, the Stormers will play pre-season matches against the Cheetahs, South Western Districts Eagles and Lions and Fleck is hoping to see some growth in that those games.
"I just want to see progression. We set ourselves certain goals last year and we set some goals in this [pre-season] camp [in Hermanus] and we certainly ticked the boxes on those.
"We will take it game by game. I just want to see progression in terms of our conditioning, in terms of our skill set and our decision making. I don't think we are too concerned about making mistakes. We really want to encourage the guys to play.
"It is important that we play well and embrace the way that we want to play and get confidence from that. We got some good games. We play the Cheetahs in Zimbabwe and we play the Super Rugby finalists [Lions] at home at Newlands, so we got our work cut out," Fleck added.
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