Stormers captain Ruhan Nel admitted it wasn't pretty, but a 29-21 win over the Dragons propelled the Cape Town side to second in the United Rugy Championship. Photo: Backpagepix
Image: Backpagepix
Stormers captain Ruhan Nel summed it up after his team’s 29-21 defeat of the spirited Dragons on Sunday when he said, “any day of the week you will take an ugly win over a beautiful loss.”
The “ugly” refers to the squandered opportunities and the flood of turnovers, but to be fair to the Capetonians, they also scored some excellent tries as they did the business on the URC log, moving up to second place thanks to the five points they earned.
Coach John Dobson felt the lack of accuracy was down to the players trying too hard after the high of emphatically beating the Bulls the week before.
“We wanted to replicate last week’s efficiency (at Loftus Versfeld), but we didn’t,” Dobson said. “We turned over far too much ball, especially in the second half when we were trying things from too far out.
“We turned down a couple of easy threes to go for the corner and got nothing out of it,” Dobson continued.
“In fact, one of those decisions led to their entry (for a try). That was a big factor in the game.”
The Dragons scored three well-worked tries and they could have had two more had it not been for some brilliant cover-tackling by Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu. The flyhalf showed blistering pace to twice thwart Dragons' attackers near the Stormers’ tryline.
Feinberg-Mngomezulu scored his team’s first two tries for a strong personal outing.
Nel felt the Stormers would have had more breathing space on the scoreboard had they made better decisions with the ball in hand.
“We did all the work to get into their 22, but then there would be a lapse of concentration or the wrong decision,” he said. “We had more than three clear chances where we should have scored.”
Dobson added that his players were overexcited at times.
“We tried to play a bit harder than we needed to. Instead of sticking to our processes, we went chasing the game and used the wrong method.”
The element of the performance that will most concern Dobson was the 19 turnovers conceded, but at the same time, the coach praised the tenacious defence of the Welshmen, especially at maul time.
“I don’t think we moved a metre after we went 35m last week at Loftus,” Dobson said. “It was a big factor in not getting what we wanted.
“The Dragons are probably the No 1 defending team in the URC since January,” Dobson added. “They’re physical, they disrupt you, and they made it very difficult for us.”
Nel added to his coach’s comment: “You can’t be fooled by their log position (15th). They’re desperate and dangerous. They’ve got big ball-carriers, and they defended our mauls really well.
“It was our scrum that bailed us out a few times when we were under pressure,” Nel said. “It gave us penalties and a way to exit.”
This week, the Stormers host an Edinburgh side hurting from their heavy defeat to the Lions at Ellis Park.