Stormers captain out for few games
NEWS: Stormers forwards coach Rito Hlungwani confirmed on Monday that captain Salmaan Moerat will be out of action for a few games after picking up an injury against the Lions in their United Rugby Championship opener at Ellis Park on Saturday.
Moerat, back after a lengthy lay-off due to a knee injury, left the field in the 26th minute with a pectoral injury.
“Unfortunately it looks like a pretty serious injury so we won’t be seeing him for a couple of games. I’m sure Dobbo [John Dobson] will confirm later in the week, but it’s not a good injury,” Hlungwani said.
It leaves the Stormers without a captain but the forwards coach did not want to speculate on who will lead the side against the Scarlets in Stellenbosch this weekend.
“We still have to discuss it thoroughly and finalise it but Neethling [Fouche] is in the leadership group so he would be one of the guys we would consider.”
Hlungwani said they were very happy to walk away with five points in the bag, despite the Lions giving them a scare in the last quarter of the game with a massive fight back.
“We are very happy with the five points but continuous improvement is very important to us and there are a few things which we identified that we could’ve done better.
“We know the Lions in the last 25 minutes, they always come out with a little bit more intensity than they started the game. And a big part of it, we felt we were seduced by that style of play.
“You would have seen a quick line-out when we thought our maul was starting to dominate a bit and I think we sort of played into their hands. But we’ve got to get better, that’s one thing, we have to improve and we have to get better.
Looking ahead to this weekend and facing the Welsh side, he did not want to hype up their loss against the Bulls at Loftus Versfeld on Sunday.
“The Scarlets, just like us, playing that first game after a longish preseason, playing at altitude is always going to be tough. We’ve played a lot more against the Lions and the Bulls so we understand the fact of altitude and how to deal with it and how to prepare for it.
“But the Scarlets wouldn’t have had that kind of luxury of experience. So that would’ve played a massive role.
“But they were playing a strong Bulls team. I think they will come here and they will fight. They are very competitive, they are not going to sit back, relax and look to go home. But we expect it to be a very tough game.
“They usually play very well against us, a nice mix of flair and a kicking game style of rugby.
He was asked to comment on prop Kwenzo Blose who was taken off the field early in the game after struggling in the scrums, and said the Stormers were already warned about a yellow card at that stage.
“That’s always a tricky one. When someone struggles you want to keep them there so that they can eventually learn.
“But we had to make that tough decision quite early in the half to substitute him because we felt that he’d already given the referee a bad picture and the referee had already warned us for a yellow card.
It was a tough decision for us to make but Kwenzo wasn’t happy with his performance and because there was a bad picture already. There were one or two scrums where I thought they were tough calls.
“So we looked at it in detail today, we had a long chat about it, but there’s going to be a lot of lessons taken out of that.
“We sit in a room, Brock Harris is there, Lizo Gqoboka is also a Springbok, he is sitting there, you’ve got Sti Sithole who is also a good scrummager, you’ve got Neethling Fouche in there.
“So you’ve good discussions, lots to be picked up and learnt, so as much as Kwenzo struggled a bit, he probably learnt quite a lot. And you will definitely see him again, playing for the team very soon.
“In terms of Lizo, it was quite nice to see him come and relieve some of the pressure. You saw we also started getting a couple of scrum penalties when he came on.
“It shows the experience that he has that he has built over the years. So it was quite nice to see him coming in and he will tell you himself that he wasn’t at his best yet.
“He is still trying to find his feet in terms of how our systems work. But so early in the season, so early in his time with the Stormers, we were quite happy with that.
He confirmed that Jean-Luc du Plessis started training on Monday.
