The Stormers have vowed to bounce back against Cardiff at the Arms Park on Friday night after a “brutal” review of their 38-38 draw with Ulster.
Defence coach Norman Laker admitted the Stormers let themselves down in Belfast, a result that saw them surrender top spot on the Vodacom URC log to the Glasgow Warriors.
“The review was quite brutal,” Laker said. “I think we’ve learned a few lessons at this stage of the competition. Friday wasn’t our best. We let ourselves down, did stuff we don’t normally do, and didn’t do stuff that we trained.”
Despite scoring freely, the Stormers were frustrated with their defence after conceding six tries.
“You know me, I’m all about tries for and tries against. The tries against were a bit too much, so for me there weren’t a lot of positives,” Laker admitted.
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Hooker André-Hugo Venter said discipline and decision-making needed to improve after several costly momentum swings.
“Those mostly came from our mistakes. If we don’t create momentum swings for other teams, we should be well off.”
One of the oddities of the match was that the Stormers did not have a single scrum put-in, negating one of their key weapons. While Ulster did knock the ball on several times, the referee played advantage.
The Stormers were also frustrated by Ulster’s ability to shut down their maul, despite a 100% success rate at lineout time.
“That took a bit of punch out of our game,” Venter said. “It’s something we’ll definitely look to fix this weekend.”
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Seventh-placed Cardiff, coached by former South African forward Corniel van Zyl, are still chasing a playoff place.
“They’re a ball-in-hand team, very similar to Ulster,” Laker said. “There are a few South Africans playing for them as well. [Scrumhalf] Johan Mulder used to play at the Lions. They’re a well-coached team.”
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The Stormers are already guaranteed at least a home quarter-final, but Venter insists they’re targeting a top-two finish.
“If you go through after the quarter-finals, you want to play as many games [semi-final and final] at home as possible,” he said. “That means we need to walk away with a win this weekend.
“Our desperation will be just as high as theirs.”
Photo: Anton Geyser/Gallo Images
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