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Stormers wait on Burger scan

Gavin Rich

Cape Town - The Stormers’ bizarre luck with injuries continued at the weekend, with both Conrad Jantjes and Schalk Burger, two of their most experienced players, forced from the field early in the Super 14 match against the Chiefs at Newlands.

Jantjes is out for the rest of the season with a broken leg, but the Stormers will be holding thumbs that a scan on Burger’s injured knee does not disclose any damage that will keep him out of Saturday’s final home match against the Western Force.

The Stormers are languishing in 11th position on the log, and with injuries mounting, they are in danger of ending in the bottom two if they don’t quickly arrest their slide and make a fist of the remaining fixtures. As the stand-in captain for Jean de Villiers, Burger is an important figure, and he was sorely missed in the defeat to the Chiefs.

Luke Watson deputised for Burger in the 28-14 loss, and was the form local player in the match, so he should be given the opportunity to continue as captain should Burger be ruled out. However, there should be an injection of experience for the Force match, with Andries Bekker and Gcobani Bobo both set to return from injury lay-offs.

Brian Mujati, the Springbok tighthead who has been out for some time after being concussed against the Brumbies in Canberra on Easter Saturday, is also due back, although Brok Harris has played so well at tighthead that coach Rassie Erasmus must be tempted to continue with him.

Erasmus said after the game on Saturday night that the past few weeks had shown him that the Stormers and Western Province did have depth to work with as his team had remained competitive despite an injury list that would have destroyed his previous side, the Cheetahs.

“I really think that if I had been coaching any other franchise, with this amount of injuries and bad luck, we really wouldn’t have been competitive,” said Erasmus.

The reality though is that while the Stormers may have been competitive on the scoreboard against the Chiefs, they were scrambling for much of the match by a team that outclassed them in several departments.

While Erasmus is talking about continuing with the youth, he has to think twice about retaining Tiger Bax as his fullback. The young UCT player has a bright future and showed some promise on attack, but he only played 20 minutes as a fullback in the recent Varsity Cup and appears to lack the kicking game the Stormers need.

Percy Montgomery is due to retire at the end of the competition, but there are some who feel he should be persuaded to return to international action for the British and Irish Lions series to solve a potential problem with back-up goalkicker. If he gets a chance to play in Jantjes’s place in the last two Super 14 games, we could find that Montgomery ends up killing two birds with one stone.

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