The DHL Stormers are searching for a lock from outside the region to help them through the current crisis.
But just who the Stormers will target to come in to provide a temporary solution to the problems that have been caused by injuries and the departure for Japan of Andries Bekker is difficult to ascertain for there is not a lot out there and an approach to former Western Province lock Quinn Roux, now playing in Ireland, never went anywhere.
EP Kings lock Steve Sykes, a former Sharks stalwart, has also turned down the Stormers on the basis that he wants to commit himself fully to his province’s entry into the Premier Division of the Absa Currie Cup later in the year.
SuperSport
Bekker is in Cape Town at present but his injury insurance is too hefty for him to play for the Stormers for just a few weeks, so new WP director of rugby Gert Smal has his first really pressing headache to contend with since taking up his new role as he tries to identify a likely reinforcement.
It will have to happen quickly too, as Eben Etzebeth and Manuel Carizza are due back in a couple of weeks from injury so the new man would effectively only be covering for three weeks. That is a consideration that seems to have Stormers coach Allister Coetzee wondering if there would be a point to getting a reinforcement if it doesn’t happen immediately.
“Currently Gert and I are discussing the issue of a reinforcement and I am sure he has taken it up, but if we do get someone in from outside the system how long will it take him to get up to speed?” said Coetzee.
“Duane Vermeulen has played there for us and even Schalk is prepared to have a go at lock. There is Tazz Fuzani in the system. So one has to make a decision and we are in the process of discussing it.”
The Stormers have their top five locks out at present in the form of Etzebeth, De Kock Steenkamp, Carizza, Rynhardt Elstadt and Gerbrandt Grobler, while the promising young under-21 lock Jean Kleyn, of whom much is expected, has also not been able to take the opportunity he would have been offered in the current situation because he is also injured.
The Stormers face the Highlanders, who are riding high after upsetting the Cell C Sharks in Durban last week, in a Vodacom Super Rugby match at Newlands on Saturday that is now of academic interest only to the Cape side as last week’s defeat to the Toyota Cheetahs extinguished any last flickering hope of making the extended play-offs.
The rest of the season will probably be devoted to getting the new attacking game up to speed, but Coetzee will be the first to admit that this past weekend in Bloemfontein showed that it can’t be at the expense of the reliable defensive game that got the Stormers into the play-offs for three successive seasons before they crashed last year.
It is a long time since the Stormers missed as many tackles as they did against the Cheetahs. Attacking intent is all well and good but defence is at least half the game and you can’t win if it is up to scratch. Neither can you attack without the ball, and with Deon Fourie committed to playing hooker at the moment because of injuries to the two players above him in the pecking order, the Stormers are struggling to win the turn-over ball they need.
The consistency they found in their set-phase play against the Lions on Easter Saturday was also not there against the Cheetahs.
“Set piece will always be the No 1 thing because when you lose your lineout ball you end up defending your own ball, and if you keep defending you get tired,” said Coetzee.
I’m a positive person… live on the bright side of the road… on the sunny end of the street… and always look for the positives of every situation…
but hell man… Allister Coetzee is an ever darkening cloud that overshadows any possible bright future in WP Rugby…
I’ve always supported him in the past… but his inability to accept responsibility for his coaching and his continued cowardly blaming of the players for the hole the Stormers are in… has seen every last bit of respect I had for the man disappear like the morning fog on False Bay…
Firstly… YOU allowed Quinn Roux to leave by not deeming him valuable enough to hang onto in Cape Town. Then you said he’d be back the next year…? What the hell happened…? Ahh Eben was wearing red underpants so you didn’t even think you needed to build depth at lock.
Secondly… despite everyone raving about him at school level… YOU did not rate Pieter-Steph Du Toit highly enough to sign him to a contract in his home province.
Thirdly… YOU played Andries into the ground. You broke his body bit by bit and and forced him to play with injuries and destroyed his confidence. If you had managed him better he could have still be playing for the Stormers.
Fourthly… instead of giving an opportunity to any young up and coming locks you import an Argie lock. An Argie FFS!! Who has never played rugby at the intensity and length of Super Rugby. So straight away… all our young locks start looking at opportunities out of Cape Town.
Fifthly… Eben is injured because you played him into the ground just like you did to Andries. As soon as you have a good player in a position you forget all about building depth and looking for other players in that position.
Sixthly… Why the f#$%^ing hell do you continue to ignore Tazz Fuzani? He is an excellent player with a great attitude and a tackle that will stop an Abrahms A1 tank in its tracks. All he needs is some backing from the coach and time on the field. But you put him on the bench and don’t even use him in the game… meaning he could have played for the Vodacom cup team… but instead gets no desperately needed game time.
Seventhy… Ruan Botha is doing great… Why undo all the good work he’s done and destroy his confidence by putting out that we have huge problem at lock and need top call in reinforcements? Straight away Ruan must start doubting himself.. and his future in Cape Town?
Select Ruan and Tazz and bring either the Vocacom Cup locks… or the Maties, UCT, UWC locks… or a lock from one of the 90 clubs at your disposal. Surely there must be a couple of capable locks out of 180 that start every weekend? Chances are it would only be a week or two and they would only need to sit on the bench and have a few minutes game time anyway?
How great wouldn’t it be for a lock and his club to get such a call up? How much excitement and gees would that stimulate in WP rugby circles…? Who knows… you could even unearth a hidden gem.
But instead you tell every lock in the Cape they are useless and don’t deserve even a cameo role for their provincial team.
I am so sick of your desperate searches for players every year to cover gaps in your planning. Every year it is the same. Why do the other provinces not have these problems and why do they not resort to headless-chicken searches for players who can’t secure contracts ANYWHERE in either the Southern or Northern hemisphere?
You’re a joke in world rugby Allister. You tell foreign players it doesn’t matter that the whole rugby world thinks they’re too useless to contract… they will still be welcomed with open arms by you and WP Rugby… as rugby saviours… over the legitimate and deserving homegrown talent.
And you wonder why WP Rugby finds itself at the bottom of a long drop?
You dragged us there.
Please show us you at least have some integrity and resign to allow somehow who does actually have a plan to take over.
Failing that… please Gert… do the right thing…!!
@ ufo:
I understand your frustration totally.
Unfortunately, I doubt that either AC or any of the WP/Stormers’ “brains trust” will take the time to read your plea, and if they do, I’m damn sure it would be in one ear, and out the other.
I’ve read elsewhere that the Stormers’ catchment area has more registered Rugby players than Australia and New Zealand combined.
IF that is true, and IF AC can’t find any home grown talent good enough, then as you say, all is lost.
Good luck. I sincerely hope that the right decisions are made for Rugby, and more importnantly Rugby in the Western Cape.
cheers scrummie… yeah… let’s hope Gert starts making the hard… and right… decisions…
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