DHL Stormers under no illusions
Forwards Coach Russell Winter says that the DHL Stormers are under no illusions about the size of the challenges that lie ahead this season.
After an encouraging start to the season, which saw them score three second-half tries to beat the Vodacom Bulls 33-9 at DHL Newlands on Saturday it was back to work for the players and coaching staff at the High Performance Centre in Bellville on Monday.
Winter said that while it was pleasing to start the season with a win in front of a huge crowd at home, the DHL Stormers are well-aware that there is still a long way to go and many improvements still to be made as the season progresses.
“It was a nice opener for us and we got a lot of things right but we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves.
“We understand that it is early days in the competition, and after having a closer look there are still things we can work on and sharpen up. By no means are we the end product.
“We just want to keep our feet on the ground and keep chipping away and hopefully we can improve on the performance we put in on Saturday,” he said.
Winter said that it will be important to build on the performance against the Vodacom Bulls and introduce new variations to their game constantly in order to stay one step ahead of the opposition.
“We are under no illusions that it is going to be easy from here on in, we know it is going to be very tough. It is going to be tough to pull off some of the things that we tried on the weekend so we are going to have to work harder and bring more variation in to make sure we do not become monotonous,” he said.
The Forwards Coach was happy with the line-outs againt the Vodacom Bulls, but warned that they cannot afford to get complacent in this area, despite the considerable second row talent at their disposal.
“We have been working hard in the off-season on our line-outs, our lifts, just the basic principles of how to get the ball which all starts with the lift.
“Of course there is the personnel with JD [Schickerling], Eben [Etzebeth] and Pieter-Steph [Du Toit] who are very explosive individuals who want to contest for the ball.
“We want to try and be a little bit more creative, we want to make sure our line-outs don’t all look the same and we are not just this team that comes and tries to drive everything,” he said.
