VIDEO: Stormers won't 'box' their magic men
The Stormers are fast regaining the ‘fight’ that made them champions and are now adding the ‘magic’ that could turn them into South Africa’s premier franchise again.
The Stormers will end the year on the brink of the top eight and a play-off spot in the United Rugby Championship.
It required a late try from Jean-Luc du Plessis to secure a 24-20 win over the Sharks in Cape Town this past weekend – a result that saw the Stormers record back-to-back bonus-point wins and move up to ninth place on tournament standings at the halfway stage of the league stage.
It was an intense South African derby, but the Stormers showed great character to come through and finish the year on a high with a hard-fought five log points.
The #BIG news out of the camp is that Springbok star Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu does not require surgery for the injury that saw him leave the field late in the first half.
The sternoclavicular dislocation will sideline him for three to five weeks and mainly requires ‘rest’.
That means he will miss the Cape Town franchise’s next batch of matches.
They host Sale Sharks in Cape Town next Saturday (January 11) and then have a challenging trip to Paris where they will face Racing 92 at the La Defense Arena on January 18.
Then the Stormers face runaway leaders Leinster in Dublin in the URC, before returning to Cape Town to host the Bulls in a rescheduled Round One encounter.
Injuries aside, the Stormers are a team on the up.
Captain Deon Fourie waxed lyrical about the ‘fight’ his team showed in their win over the Sharks, but it is the need to sometimes ‘rein in’ the wild enthusiasm of their play-makers that is the biggest challenge going forward.
“Our errors are the easy fixables,” Fourie said.
“One thing you can’t buy or teach is the fight.”
The captain added that the “magic players” are the biggest addition to the team that won them the inaugural URC title – when they had the ‘fight’ but not the level of creativity they have now.
(WATCH as Stormers captain Deon Fourie speaks about letting the team’s playmakers ‘run wild’….)
“You don’t want to put them in a box,” Fourie said of their playmakers, adding: “They are who they are and you have to play with them.
“Sometimes you have to pull them in [rein them in] and explain that there is structure to this team and sometimes it is more important than the magic..
“I told the guys: ‘You have to earn the magic’.
“It is difficult for those guys to grasp it, but that is what makes them brilliant players.
“You don’t want to keep them in a box.”
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