DHL Stormers keeping the faith

While disappointed with their recent results, the DHL Stormers will not lose faith in the approach that they committed to for this Vodacom Super Rugby campaign.

The 17-13 defeat to the Vodacom Bulls at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday saw the DHL Stormers surrender top spot in Africa conference one to their rivals from Pretoria for the first time this season.

DHL Stormers Head Coach Robbie Fleck was left frustrated after a game in which his team had dominated territory and possession, but made it clear that they will not stray from their stated ambition to play fearless rugby this season.

“We won’t stop what we are doing. We will continue to be fearless and play an attacking brand of rugby which eventually will come together for us. There have been glimpses when it has worked and there were stages here as well.

“But at the end of the day, we made too many mistakes and gave away too many penalties which cost us. We certainly won’t stop what we doing and working hard towards a better product,” he said.

The DHL Stormers coach admitted that his side will have to bounce back quickly when they host the Toyota Cheetahs at DHL Newlands this weekend.

“This match is a tough one to swallow and we are going to have to show real character. We won’t lose faith or hope and it is important that we win well at Newlands before the Test break,” he said.

Fleck gave credit to the Vodacom Bulls who managed to hold out at home in the face of some relentless attack from the DHL Stormers.

“Credit to the Bulls, they put our line-out under pressure and contested really effectively. We obviously couldn’t launch from that and then a couple of scrum penalties kept them in the game in the first half.

“When it is a tight game, you need to dominate the set-piece, which we didn’t.

“Their defence worked incredibly hard for each other. We were attacking pretty well and were able to retain possession but they did really well to slow our ball down and we weren’t able to push the tempo,” he said.