Bulls keep helping Stormers

One thing that has not been spoken about a lot this season, but which has been acknowledged by the Stormers coaches, is the way having the Bulls play every opponent one week ahead of them on tour has helped their own campaign.

You cannot play against more physical opponents than the Bulls, and even in defeat, they do tend to hurt those they play against. When the Stormers played the Blues recently, for the first 30 minutes of that Eden Park match the home team played like they were tentative, perhaps a legacy of the bruises they had sustained, even in victory, against the Bulls seven days earlier.

The Reds may have won against the Bulls at the weekend, but by the end of that match some of the Reds players, particularly in the forwards, looked like they had played themselves to a standstill and there were some who looked battered and bruised. Will Genia’s men had to dig deep to ward off the late Bulls assault on their line, and that would have taken a lot out of them.

There is just a six day turn-around for the Reds, as the Stormers game will be played on a Friday. That is not much time to shake off bruises sustained in the Bulls clash, and the Stormers are aware that this may play into their hands.

Not only do the Stormers have a full seven day turn-around from their game against the Chiefs, the nature of their victory would also have conspired in their favour.

“There is no doubt that attacking and carrying the ball uses up a lot less energy than defending, and in the last two games we have carried the ball a lot,” said coach Allister Coetzee.

“To me that is heartening, for the most important thing about the last match of the tour is that we must pitch up. It will all about us being fresh, being ready for the challenge, and the last two games have helped us in that regard. I don’t think we are going to go into the Brisbane game feeling like a team that is out on its feet.

“It was one of the reasons I told the guys after the opening match against the Lions, where we did a lot of defending in the second half, that we need to find a way to spend a greater proportion of the game with the ball in our hands and forcing the opposition to do the defending.”

The Stormers may not be out on their feet, but how are the Reds feeling? The way they celebrated their win over the Bulls you got the impression they had played their final, and the amount of emotional and physical energy expended in the game could play into the Stormers’ hands.

At least the Stormers will be hoping so, for the Reds showed in their win over the Bulls that they deserve to be recognised as genuine Super 14 contenders. It was their second win of the season at home against one of the member of the current top three as they also outplayed the Crusaders there earlier in the year.

That was why even while still celebrating the 49-15 drubbing of the Chiefs two days ago, Coetzee was already thinking ahead to the Reds game.

“The Reds are much like us in that they have an extremely solid defence and they have also developed an outstanding attacking game. We will need to put a lot of thought into finding a way to beat them,” said Coetzee.

If they do beat the Reds, the Stormers will return to South Africa for a sequence of three tough matches against Crusaders (Newlands), Sharks (Durban) and the Bulls (Newlands) in a strong position.

While the Reds win brought the Australians into contention – they are now just three points adrift of the Stormers – it also increased the Stormers’ chances of bidding for top position on the log and home ground advantage in the final should they get that far.

Not that Coetzee is thinking of that right now.

“I have had the policy all season of taking each week as it comes, and I will not change that. Our next objective is to beat the Reds, and we must just keep the momentum up from the Chiefs game. We shocked the Chiefs with our intensity and our pace, as well as with our physicality. It was a superb effort from the guys.

“Last week we were good in the first half against the Blues, but I thought in this game we were close to the best 80 minute performance I have seen from the Stormers. What is pleasing was that it was a game where we backed up a good win the previous week. In the past there have been great wins but they seldom got backed up the following week.”