Stormers will remain fearless
The loss to the Bulls means the Stormers have not tasted victory since their 40-22 win over the Reds at Newlands in Round Nine. Before this, they suffered a 17-all draw to the Sunwolves in Singapore after going down 30-32 to the Waratahs.
"We won't stop what we are doing. We will continue to be fearless and play an attacking brand of rugby which eventually will come together for us. There have glimpses when it has worked and there were stages here [against the Bulls] as well.
"But at the end of the day, we made too many mistakes and gave away too many penalties which cost us. We certainly won't stop what we doing and working hard towards a better product.
"It was tough against the Waratahs, then we had a poor performance in Singapore but this is the nature of the competition. This match [against the Bulls] is a tough one to swallow and we are going to have to show real character. We won't lose faith or hope and it is important that we win well at Newlands before the Test break," he said.
The Bulls dominated the setpieces and disrupted two key areas of the Stormers' game – the line-outs and scrums.
"Credit to the Bulls, they put our line-out under pressure and contested really effectively. We obviously couldn't launch [attacks] from that and then a couple of scrum penalties kept them in the game in the first half.
"When it is a tight game, you need to dominate the setpiece – which we didn't.
"Their defence worked incredibly hard for each other. We were attacking pretty well and were able to retain possession but they did really well to slow our ball down and we weren't able to push the tempo.
"They brought the tempo down to their pace, which didn't suit us and it became a setpiece battle – something we didn't want. We wanted a quick, open game. We were surviving on scraps in the second half and couldn't really launch anything," he added.
