Africa-Press – South-Africa. The travel and injury toll was always going to catch up with the Stormers at some point.
Try as he may, Stormers head coach John Dobson could not keep selecting his preferred 23 every week while juggling long layovers in Dubai, bus rides from London to Dublin and trips to Europe and back every week this and last month.
Juggling the twin European competitions, the United Rugby Championship (URC) and Champions Cup, in tandem has taken a toll on SA’s franchises, but the Stormers have managed to put up a fight, managing second position and a home playoff in each, respectively.
Dobson, who lost Manie Libbok to concussion against London Irish, made a raft of changes that saw the likes of Stefan Ungerer at 9, Jean-Luc du Plessis start at 10, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu at 12 and even veteran Juan de Jongh on the bench against Ulster at Kingspan Stadium on Friday night.
Captain Steven Kitshoff, Frans Malherbe, Damian Willemse, Deon Fourie, Leolin Zas, Hacjivah Dayimani and the like remained in South Africa getting a well-earned rest.
However, the team that travelled to Belfast still boasts in-form centre Ruhan Nel, Evan Roos, Willie Engelbrecht, and Springbok Marvin Orie, who captains the outfit.
Dobson said they were in Ireland to compete and not to entertain after making 10 changes to the team that beat Clermont 30-16 in Cape Town last week.
“The players’ welfare is a factor. But I can assure you that when we sat down to choose the team, we tried to balance leaving some guys behind to get ready for the Sharks next week and to give others an opportunity,” said Dobson.
“But we still want a team that can compete and beat Ulster – I think that’s the team we named. But it’s going to be a different sort of game.
“But this is not a game in 29 degrees at Cape Town Stadium. We’re not here to delight the Belfast crowd.
“What will make Cape Town proud is how we fight. And this is really a team of guys who are prepared to fight and for different reasons.
“Some want to take their opportunity and others, it’s just in their nature.”
Dobson said, like the Bulls, they would be judged on Friday night’s result in Belfast, saying that they did not believe in a B team concept despite the team changes.
“I’ll be honest, at the start of the season, Ulster away, considering all the needle from our two games last year, a very hard place and one of the hardest to play away in Europe, we thought this might be a game you could send a B team,” Dobson said.
“But that’s not how it’s turned out. We’re here to win the game and are definitely not a B team.
“The Stormers is the Stormers, no matter the result, no matter who’s wearing that jersey. The Bulls put out very much a second-string team at Exeter and people said it was a poor Bulls performance.
“And that’s right because there’s no such thing as a B team – you represent that union. That’s what we’re going to do on Friday night.
“It’s an exciting team if I look at the loose trio combo, the halfbacks, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu and Ruhan Nel. It’s really exciting.”
Kick-off is at 21:35 SA time.
Stormers
15 Clayton Blommetjies, 14 Suleiman Hartzenberg, 13 Ruhan Nel, 12 Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, 11 Cornel Smit, 10 Jean-Luc du Plessis, 9 Stefan Ungerer, 8 Evan Roos, 7 Willie Engelbrecht, 6 Junior Pokomela, 5 Marvin Orie (captain), 4 Ben-Jason Dixon, 3 Brok Harris, 2 JJ Kotze, Ali Vermaak
Substitutes: 16 Scarra Ntubeni, 17 Kwenzo Blose, 18 Sazi Sandi, 19 Ruben van Heerden, 20 Marcel Theunissen, 21 Herschel Jantjies, 22 Kade Wolhuter, 23 Juan de Jongh
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