Stormers need to be better

Cape Town - It may be another win under the belt, but the Stormers will have to be far more polished if they are to challenge for Super Rugby honours later in the season. 

Saturday's 40-22 win over the Reds at Newlands looks convincing enough on the scoreboard, but it was a struggle for the home side until deep into the second half as unforced errors and missed tackles made their task as difficult as possible. 

The four log points mean that the Stormers take another step towards securing a home quarter-final, but coach Robbie Fleck was far from pleased with what he saw. 

"It’s not the performance we wanted, to be honest," Fleck said after the match.

"Some good moments … but the consistency wasn’t there. Too many errors let us down.

"We say week in, week out that we want to keep improving but this wasn’t really an improvement on the Lions performance.

"I must give the team credit, though. It’s been a disruptive week, we lost both our leaders."

The Stormers had lost co-captains Juan de Jongh (concussion) and Frans Malherbe (illness) before the match. 

Malherbe was only withdrawn on Saturday morning, meaning that Damian de Allende took on the captaincy. 

But Fleck would not blame the disruptions for his side's mediocrity, and he praised the Austrlian tourists. 

"I thought they did well," Fleck said of the Reds.

"Their set piece was good, their broken play was good, they put us under pressure. To come away with a win by 18 points and not play to our best is pretty pleasing.

"We’ll pick up from this. That last try personifies what we can do and what the boys like to do and there were moments of that in the first half.

"When we retained possession we were able to put them under immense pressure. It should have been a bigger score, but it wasn’t."

The Stormers will now prepare for another home fixture against Australian opposition - the Waratahs on Saturday.