The blows just keep coming for the Stormers, who have fresh injury woes to contend with in addition to the bitter pill of losing at the death to the Crusaders – by a single point!
Latest news is that both hooker Scarra Ntubeni and prop Pat Cilliers have been forced to return home, after suffering calf and rib injuries respectively. Furthermore, Mike Rhodes (back) and Frans Malherbe (toe) are also battling ahead of Friday’s match against the Chiefs.
On official replacement have yet been named, but you get the feeling there must be some furious behind-the-scenes work going on, given the short turnaround before the next game.
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Its all falling apart for the Stormers this season, eh!
Good to see Burger back though.
Eish, that’s a huge amount of disruption. Good luck Stormers!
Eish
Jacques vd Westhuyzen sums it up: “But if the players are honest with themselves they’ll know they didn’t ask enough questions with the ball in hand and really only kept things tight because of their defence.”
A lot of sportswriters have been blowing smoke up the Stormers arses for losing by one point to the Crusaders. So much so, you’d think that they actually pulled off a stunning victory. But I think we just need a little perspective here. The Crusaders are a really shoddy outfit this year and the Stormers should have put at least 3 tries past them. They buggered one certain try up thru player incompetence (Kobus Van Wyk must have no hair left to tear out after Taute dissed him with a glory run to the line). The fact remains that they simply have to get better as an attacking unit if they want to put other teams to the sword.
The Crusaders were able to win on Saturday not because they were the better team, but because the Stormers were easy to catch up to and overhaul.
Anyway that’s my rant.
Like the Sharks under Plumtree, Stormers are gonna suffer loads of injuries as their only ‘strategy’ is to dominate the collision point.
I have always rated AC, but I think the coaching team is in a rut. Time for some changes.
@Big Fish (Comment 5) : Word