Dobson: 'We'll have to be much better'
REACTION: Stormers Director of Rugby John Dobson admitted that his team will have to step up against Edinburgh next weekend following a scrappy 29-21 Round 13 United Rugby Championship win over the Dragons.
Dobson was pleased with the bonus point win, but conceded that the Stormers made way too many errors in general.
The Stormers conceded 19 turnovers compared to the Dragons’ 11 and had soft moments defensively on a couple of occasions, leading to the Dragons’ three tries.
With a hurting Edinburgh awaiting after their 17-54 humbling at the hands of the Lions, Dobson expects a different team to visit the DHL Stadium this coming Saturday and admitted that the Stormers will need to be much better to secure a positive result.
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“It will be a different Edinburgh next weekend, and we’ll have to be much better than we were.
“Edinburgh are on last chance saloon, and obviously Pierre Schoeman and Duhan Van der Merwe and other guys [will be available], they’ll beef up this week.
“They’ll be tough this week. See, Scotland can control those players; they can’t control Finn Russell, who is playing in England, that’s why he could play last night [Saturday].
“I think in their [Edinburgh’s] own mind, Ellis Park was an impossibility, so this puts this game down as a big one for them.
“This is a six-day turnaround for us. We know as a collective we can and will be much better.”
After a dominant display in the rolling maul department against the Bulls last weekend, the Stormers failed to convert any of their opportunities at the set-piece against the Dragons.
Dobson credited the Dragons for the way they defended the rolling maul and for forcing the Stormers to take the penalty kick after half-time and not go for the corner as they did in the first half.
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“I thought the Dragons defended our maul well,” Dobson told Rugby365.
“We turned down a couple of kicks at goal and went to the corner and got nothing out of it.
“Our scrum went great, but at the mauls we barely made a metre compared to making 35 metres last week at Loftus [Versfeld].”
Captain Ruhan Nel had huge praise for the Dragons’ fight they put up, and also touched on their brilliant maul defence.
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“You could easily be fooled by their log position; they’re currently in 12th position, and we were in the same boat last year and still made the quarterfinals,” Nel told Rugby365.
“It’s a team that’s desperate and with nothing to lose as well.
“They are big boys, and we were under no illusion that they’re just going to roll over and give us five points.
“They did well to stop our mauls, but our scrums functioned really well.”
