VIDEO: Dobson - 'I didn't expect us to play like that'
REACTION: Stormers head coach John Dobson was questioning his team’s decision-making with ball in hand again after they suffered their fourth defeat in a row in this season’s United Rugby Championship.
Their 24-31 defeat to Cardiff at Arms Park on Friday means that they have lost all their tour matches and they will now head home with a lot to do to catch some of the pacesetters in the tournament.
This latest defeat is even more disappointing for Dobson as his team raced to an early lead.
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“Cardiff played with real fight and zip. They are busy with a rebuild and we saw some of ourselves in them, but we were extremely poor,” Dobson told reporters after the match.
“We were absolutely dominant with a certain style of play and we were 14-0 up.
“I might be one out, but to get seven scrum put-ins in the second half just for us to lose the ball in contact is not good enough at URC level.
“It’s a very disappointing way to finish the tour. It’s a disappointing tour.”
Dobson added: “I didn’t expect us to play like that. It was by far our worst performance on tour, which is disappointing.”
His team’s lack of patience on attack was another area of frustration for the Stormers coach.
“I don’t know why we needed to do that. Just take the ball through the phases and eventually, they will crack and we will get a penalty and we go into the corner and have a go.
“But we seem to just want to make hail marys all the time and it is a really poor performance by us in that respect.”
Dobson questioned his team’s commitment to sticking to the game plan.
“That’s probably another element to it and probably the piece that is missing. I suppose certain guys need to smarten up some elements of their game.
“We will have Manie {Libbok] and Damian [Willemse] back this week.
“Flyhalf is an area we struggled with and that will give us a few more options.
“As a collective, we haven’t done ourselves any favours on tour.
“I don’t think the competition thinks more of us. I don’t think some of the players or staff feel good about themselves.
“It has been a poor tour. We all need to have a look at ourselves on what we could have done better. ”
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