Stormers can stay arrogant

It would have been interesting to have had a microphone on the wall of the Stormers’ planning room this week as they built up to today’s Super Rugby derby against the Bulls at Newlands.

What would have been particularly intriguing to hear would have been how the Stormers management and coaching staff discussed the Bulls. What was said would surely have had to be different to what was said leading into the last clash between these two sides.

Back in March, with the Stormers going to Pretoria looking to break a long drought against the Bulls at Loftus, it is understood that a big part of the team talks and psychological preparation were all about breaking the Bulls down.

Considering the Stormers had so long come second to the Bulls at Loftus, it was not surprising a lot of attention was paid to making them seem less formidable.

The players were told that while Victor Matfield, Bakkies Botha, Pierre Spies and company would indeed be wearing the light blue jerseys, they were a shadow of their former or usual selves.

It worked a charm, with the Stormers paying little respect to reputation and history as they drummed out a 23-13 win that said as much about the growth in their mental strength as it did the progress made in the physical aspects of their game.

But what would they have done this week? It’s probably better for the Stormers that they retain an element of arrogance and don’t fall back into the trap of paying the Bulls too much respect, but the same message about the soft underbelly of an ageing Bulls team would surely backfire.

As Stormers captain Schalk Burger put it this week, the Bulls season has turned around since that first-round match in March. It has turned around to the point that they have now won five matches on the trot, and that amounts to impressive winning momentum.

At the same time though, if you look at who the Bulls have beaten in that sequence, it is not so clear-cut that they have returned to the form that swept them to two consecutive Super 14 titles in 2009 and 2010.

With the exception of the match against the Sharks in Durban, all the other games were matches you would have expected them to win and they were all at Loftus.

The Sharks game remains the only truly convincing Bulls performance this season against quality opposition – the Chiefs and Rebels at Loftus weren’t quality opponents and the Waratahs were denuded by injury – and you did get the feeling the Sharks conspired against themselves.

Starting Adi Jacobs alongside Patrick Lambie in that game wasn’t the cleverest thing the Sharks coaches have ever done.

More than that, the Sharks’ lineout is shambolic compared to the Stormers, and it was in those areas – lineouts and running at the channel between flyhalf and inside centre – that the Bulls were able to create the dominance which led to an early lead.

After that the Sharks had no price for once they were ahead the Bulls were able to comfortably revert to their territory game in the knowledge the Sharks were always at arms length.

The Bulls forwards were impressive though, and it is here the Stormers can expect the Bulls to be more formidable than they were at Loftus. It still seems at times there are more passengers than there used to be in the Bulls unit, but they no longer resemble the Titanic, as they did when they last lost to the Western Force over the Easter weekend.

Burger is mindful of the need not to go the same way as the Sharks by conceding early points to the Bulls.

“They are a hard team to play catch-up against if they get an early lead,” he conceded, and he should know as that is what happened to the Stormers when they played the Bulls in the Super 14 final in Soweto last May.

Psychology is an interesting conversation point when referring to this game for so much has changed in that regard when it comes to north-south derbies between these teams. It used to be that the Stormers would have to answer questions about their physicality when they played the Bulls, but now it’s the other way around.

One thing the Stormers have been adept at this year has been playing big derby matches, and in the one match against the Bulls and the two against the Sharks the way they have reversed the trend of the past, when it was the Cape team that was bossed physically, has been astounding.

The only big derby played at Newlands thus far was the one against the Sharks, which was brutal, with the Stormers frankly a little lucky to come away from that game without a few citings for off-the-ball incidents.

But it is not as if the Bulls can’t be physical themselves, and they come to Newlands knowing that they have to get some form of dominance in aspects of the battle for possession if their one big hope, which is their tactical kicking game, can be properly implemented.

Of course they are without Fourie du Preez this time, and he is a big loss, while the ball doesn’t fly as far at the coast as it does on the Highveld.

But the Stormers, thanks to the absence of Peter Grant and the non-selection to the starting team of Dewaldt Duvenage, do look a bit thin in the tactical kicking department. A lot will depend for them on how young Kurt Coleman settles in his first big start at Newlands.

Clearly they are intent on keeping the ball in hand, with their policy of looking for width meeting with partial success even in the wet at Loftus.

But it is their ability to cancel out the Bulls in the collisions that will be the key to their chances of pulling off a victory that would put them on the brink of achieving their objective of obtaining automatic semi-final qualification. - Weekend Argus

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• Stormers v the Bulls: the prequel