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AUDIO: "Fleck is a good coach"

AUDIO:

SUPER RUGBY SPOTLIGHT: Another Super Rugby season is near completion and again the Stormers are left to wonder when will it be their year?

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For the last two Super Rugby seasons, the Stormers have made the quarterfinals – losing to the Chiefs on both occasions.

In 2016 the side suffered a 21-60 loss, while in 2017 they produced a much better performance but recorded a 11-17 defeat to the New Zealanders.

This year, the Stormers failed to make the quarterfinal phase and found themselves at the bottom of the South African conference.

The Capetonians’ woeful season, with merely five wins from 15 matches, have a lot of the supporters calling for Robbie Fleck’s departure.

However, the 42-year-old, whose contract runs until the end of 2019 season, seems to have the backing of assistant coach Paul Feeney.

The New Zealander admitted that in 2018 the coaching group’s experiments did not benefit the franchise, but revealed that Fleck is not the main culprit for the failures.

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“This year has been a funny year,” Feeney told reporters in Bellville.

“Last year we nearly beat the Chiefs in the quarter-finals and everyone raved about how  improved the Stormers were and now, from one year to the next, all of a sudden [Fleck] has turned into a terrible coach, that surprises me.

“I’ve been coaching for 25 years and I don’t see how coaches go from one year being pretty good to all of a sudden terrible the next.

“As a coaching group – not just Robbie, we should all be lumped in there with him – we decided to try a few new things. We looked to change a few things to get gains and not just follow other teams and other trends.

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“Some of the things didn’t pay off, as simple as that.

“And I will put my hand up, some of them were my ideas,”

https://soundcloud.com/rugby365/sharks-centre-andre-esterhuizen-ahead-of-stormers-clash

Feeney, who was brought in as the skills coach took charge of ‘unstructured play’ at the start of the season, also criticized the media for its unfair treatment towards Fleck.

The New Zealander argued that  in terms of results the Bulls and Sharks have had similar seasons  and their mentors have not received the same criticism as the Stormers’ boss.

“The Bulls are also on five wins‚ I don’t see it written in the press that John Mitchell is a bad coach. The Sharks are on six victories, one more than us‚ does that make Robert du Preez a bad coach?

“We are all fairly similar at the moment.

“I have no doubt Robbie Fleck is a good coach and I’m right behind him,”

“We’ve always talked about 2019 being the year we could push for the title and that is still the plan,”

The Stormers will be keen to end their 2018 season on a high note when they take on the Sharks on Saturday at Newlands.

By Leezil Hendricks
@Leezil07
@rugby365com

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