‘Special’ for DHL Stormers to have the Faithful back

DHL Stormers captain Salmaan Moerat says it was a special feeling to run out in front of the Faithful at DHL Stadium last week.

The Vodacom United Rugby Championship clash with the Emirates Lions at DHL Stadium was the first time since February 2020 that fans have been allowed to attend a DHL Stormers home game.

While the crowd was limited to 2000 full vaccinated spectators, Moerat said that seeing the DHL Stormers flags waving in the stands after such a long time was a special feeling.

“It was quite special to see some people in the crowd, we will slowly start making this home. It needs to start with us winning at home and then it will feel a lot better,” he said.

DHL Stormers Head Coach John Dobson said that the team were very disappointed not to get the win that their Faithful fans deserved.

“It was special to see those flags, it was one of our grave disappointments in the changeroom afterwards that we let them down, because those people went through quite a lot, they came here early with their vaccination certificates and we produced a performance like that.

“It felt great to see them there, we feel we let them down badly but it was great to play in front of them,” he said.

Dobson added that it had been an incredibly frustrating match, given that his team had dominated territory and possession.

“To dominate possession and make that amount of errors is very frustrating.

“There were 15 entries in the 22 where we lost the ball, which is a staggering, midnblowing statistic.

“We thought we had trained our way through it to be ready to play, but you could see it was an off-day but also a product of not having played for so long.

“I have got no doubt that we are a better team than we showed against the Emirates Lions. If three of those balls had stuck in the 22 we probably could have won that game.

“We don’t want to take anything away from the Emirates Lions, they were well organised and had good plans for us, but I think we are better than this.

“I don’t think we played the right game, we were definitely too lateral, the wind was strong and we were going for long passes.

“We didn’t stick to our plan, discipline is not just your behaviour with the referee, it is sticking to the plan and maybe we didn’t get that across strongly enough,” he said.

The DHL Stormers will now take a short break before they start training again in preparation for their next fixture in January.