Stormers: From SA's best bet for URC glory to biggest question mark

OPINION: The Stormers’ inconsistency, basic errors, and ill-discipline have seen them go from being the most promising team among South Africa’s United Rugby Championship play-off qualifiers to the most problematic.

Just three weeks ago, the Stormers produced possibly their best game of the season to humiliate Glasgow Warriors 48-12 to go top of the log, scoring six tries to two in the Cape Town Stadium spectacular.

The performance was the perfect bounceback from the Stormers, who fell to Connacht (24-33) the week before.

During those 80 minutes against the log-leading Scottish outfit, John Dobson’s team played as a unit, while there were too many standout individual performances to choose from.

But again, what followed that was a sloppy display of missed opportunities.

In the 38-38 draw against the Irish province in Round 17, the Stormers blew a golden chance to go top of the standings.

They recklessly spilt the ball right in front of the tryline a couple of times, and that’s not even a full recap of the opportunities they missed.

Their discipline was a huge factor in that game, and so too was their inability to make use of their numerical advantage. Instead, the Stormers built on a concerning trend of not striking while the opposition has defensive vulnerabilities when they are a player down.

Their error rate also caught the headlines, while another big issue was how the Capetonians struggled to adapt to what Ulster were doing. It didn’t even look as if they were trying to. Ulster were out to catch the Stormers off guard, and it took the visitors way too long to catch on.

With their performances in the second half of the competition sometimes following an up-and-down pattern, you’d have expected this week to go better, considering how their last outing went. It did not.

It was much worse.

Not only did the Stormers fail to fix the wrongs of last week, but they added a few more in their 16-22 defeat.

Their penalty count increased from seven against Ulster to 10 against Cardiff. They yet again blew real scoring opportunities, while Cardiff made their time in the red zone count as they converted their presence in the Stormers’ 22 into points.

The hosts’ maul defence was brilliant at Arms Park and another factor that curbed the visitors, while one thing the Stormers could be thoroughly happy with was their scrummaging and the penalties they got from it, especially early on.

Their defence was exposed, and laudable cover-defence efforts from the likes of Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu and Damian Willemse grew in importance as the Stormers were constantly lacking out wide. One has to ask why they allowed those lapses, knowing full well the dangers the 4G pitch presents for an attacking team with momentum.

The Stormers looked strong in the first seven or so minutes and did manage to be threatening at certain stages. But as the game went on, especially after Cardiff stretched their lead in the 50th minute to take the score from 17-13 to 22-13, things changed for the worse.

While 30 minutes is a lifetime in a rugby match, that score by Tom Bowen ushered in the sombre feeling that the Stormers weren’t coming back from that.

They struggled to penetrate Cardiff’s resolute defence, and standout individual performances were thin on the ground on Friday night.

Glasgow owns the No.1 spot after securing a bonus-point win over Ulster, and while the Stormers are assured of a home quarterfinal and rematch against Cardiff, Leinster’s win over Ospreys – combined with the Stormers only managing a losing bonus point in the final round of regular-season action – dashed their hopes of hosting a semifinal in Cape Town should they make it past the final eight.

What seemed like a given is now in doubt after the Stormers’ latest disappointment.

The Stormers made a fantastic start to the season, winning 10 games in a row in both the URC and Champions Cup and also reached the top of the URC table and their Champions Cup pool. But as the season went on, things changed.

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While the Lions have been sensational this season, winning the South African Shield and stringing together an impressive run at Ellis Park, cautious optimism still lingered given their history. They had never progressed to a URC quarterfinal prior to this season, and this time around they were guaranteed a first-ever URC play-off before they even took to the field on Saturday night.

Ivan van Rooyen’s stars had a special interest in Friday night’s fixtures.

They needed one result to go their way, and Ulster obliged when they went down to Glasgow in Belfast, while the Edinburgh-Connacht game produced the expected result with the Irish side coming out on top.

There was that 54-12 victory against Glasgow in Round 15, and they followed it up the very next week with a 33-21 win against Connacht.

They stumbled against Leinster, who they will face in the quarters, after the Irish team ran away with it as they scored three tries in the final 10 minutes for a 31-7 result, but the team from Johannesburg were very much in it prior to that late surge.

The Bulls, who will host Munster in the quarterfinals, meanwhile, overcame a mid-season stumble and were never really talked about with the same enthusiasm and favour in terms of progressing to the final or hosting home play-offs as the Stormers – no other South African team carried as much of that expectation as the Capetonians.

And then there’s the Sharks, who, of course, removed themselves from any such discussions a long time ago and were left with only pride and a future-focused rebuilding project to play for in the final rounds.

More was expected of the Stormers. Better was expected. And a turnover of note will be required to restore the belief of the Faithful.

Fan investment aside, things will need to improve drastically if the Stormers want to walk away from the play-offs with anything other than a list of work-ons.

When this team get it right, they are the perfect advertisement for rugby – gamebreakers much of the rugby world can only dream of, set-piece and pack brilliance against which few teams stand a chance, counter-attacking finesse that can catch any team napping, breakdown brawn that matches the best of them, and a nifty ability to grind out results.

They need to recapture that form, and there’s no better time than now to do so.