DHL Stormers director of rugby John Dobson was understandably gutted after his team’s agonising 28-27 defeat to Toulon in what he called “one of the cathedrals of rugby”, but he might have been more gutted had the Vodacom Bulls gotten over the line later in the evening.
A Stormers win at Stade Mayol and a Bulls win over Glasgow Warriors at the Scotstoun Stadium in the later game would have set up a Cape Town north versus south quarterfinal for this coming weekend.
That would have been lucrative for the Stormers, and guaranteed that there’d be a South African team in the Investec Champions Cup semifinal round for the first time.
But it was not to be as both teams came tantalisingly short. Given that the prize wasn’t a DHL Stadium playoff but a trip to Glasgow instead, Dobson can feel less gutted and may even consider that, even though there would have been huge pride gained from beating Toulon on their home ground, he and his team dodged a bullet.
This would have been the Stormers’ sequence of games over the next while, without a break, had they won in Toulon and then gone on to win the quarterfinal - Glasgow in Glasgow in Champions Cup, Connacht and Glasgow in successive weeks in Cape Town in the Vodacom URC, Leinster away in the Champions Cup semifinal and then straight into the two final URC games, which are Ulster in Belfast and Cardiff in Cardiff. And then starts a three match series of playoff fixtures if the Stormers want to go all the way in that competition…
GOING OUT WILL HELP THEIR URC CHALLENGE
Instead of going to Glasgow the Stormers now have a week off to refresh and regroup ahead of two potentially tough games against Connacht and Glasgow. Glasgow meanwhile will be arriving in Cape Town on 26 April having played a sequence of games non-stop that featured Leinster and Benetton in the URC, the Bulls and Toulon in the Champions Cup knock-outs and then the Fidelity SecureDrive Lions at Ellis Park in the URC.
There are no prizes for guessing which should be the fresher side when the 2022 champions clash with the 2024 champions in Cape Town at the end of the month.
Instead of being gutted, Dobson should have left Toulon hugely encouraged, even though there were lessons to be absorbed about how to finish a knock-out game - the series of pick-and-goes from the Stormers as they drove towards the line at the end could have been replaced by Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu simply dropping back into the pocket when the Stormers were under the Toulon posts and snapping over a winning drop-goal.
“NOT GOOD ENOUGH IN SOME AREAS”
Dobson, while clearly and rightly upset about the refereeing that robbed his team of what would have been a notable achievement in the sense that no SA team has yet won an overseas Champions Cup knock-out game, agreed afterwards that his team’s performance wasn’t perfect.
“We would have loved to have won this game at one of the cathedrals of rugby, but we were maybe not quite good enough in some areas,” said Dobson afterwards.
“We didn’t get our usual scrum dominance and it just seemed a bit of a mess. But our players mustn’t lose heart as it was still a very good performance.”
It was indeed, and maybe Dobson could have added that the defence could have been more adept at defending the Toulon wide attacks, with three of the home team’s four tries coming through the route of long wide passes that exposed the Stormers as being too narrow.
However, the linespeed was top drawer all game, and it was the Stormers’ resilience on defence in the first half that allowed them to be in the game when, as planned, a powered bench lifted the tempo and all but ran Toulon off their feet in the last quarter.
SUCCEEDED IN BEING ALMOST POLITE ABOUT POOR REF CALLS
All but did it, that is, had it not been for the refereeing, which Dobson was polite about but left nothing to the imagination with his post match comments. A yellow card and a penalty had resulted from a cynical Toulon infringement from a Stormers driving maul that looked like being a certain try with seven minutes to go, but no penalty try, and then there was the call at the death when it looked like Adre Smith had gone over the line to score the Stormers’ winning try.
“We have to adapt to some EPCR interpretations,” said Dobson, no doubt intending a touch of irony in saying it.
“In the URC, which is obviously our day job, when you run into a maul like that and it gets brought down (as it’s about to cross the line) it’s clearly a penalty try. But not in the EPCR. (And) I was obviously a bit frustrated at the end there. Once it goes to the TMO then maybe you can’t see the grounding and the on-field decision for some reason was ‘no try’.
“What is frustrating for us is that (Toulon flanker Charles) Ollivan is clearly inside the field of play on the ground. I believe Adre got the ball down and I don’t understand why it wasn’t awarded. It was a very frustrating way for the game to end.”
URC IS STILL MORE REALISTIC TARGET FOR SA SILVERWARE
Indeed, it was, but had the Stormers won it would surely have compromised their URC challenge.
“Now we have to focus on the URC,” said Dobson, something that the coaches of two other major contenders for URC honours this season, Glasgow and Leinster, can’t say right now. And as the URC is at this point definitely still the competition a South African team is most likely to win, that could just be a telling point in the favour of the local sides who now have less of a logistical quagmire to deal with than might otherwise have been the case.
The Stormers should also feel that although the officials denied them, they pretty much got the better of Toulon on their home field, and that in a season where the Stormers have already won five games overseas (just the one understrength defeat to Harlequins before this one).
They may not be at what Dobson refers to as “the top table” just yet but the Stade Mayol game was further confirmation that they are heading in that direction.