Stormers coach expects huge scrum battle in crunch Champions Cup clash with La Rochelle
The Stormers squad form a huddle during a training session.
The Stormers are expecting a strong response from La Rochelle in Saturday’s Champions Cup fixture in Cape Town and have identified the French’s club’s scrum as one of their strengths.
The men from the Cape and the defending champions will go into this round two fixture in the wake of defeats.
Wary of La Rochelle
The Stormers lost to Leicester last week, while La Rochelle were defeated at home by Leinster in a repeat of the the 2022/23 Champions Cup final.
“Losing at home is not what they wanted, they’ve got a great record of winning in La Rochelle. I think they’ll come down and try to get those points that they lost last weekend,” said Stormers utility forward Deon Fourie.
Stormers forwards coach Rito Hlungwani added: “La Rochelle have a good scrum. The one positive thing about it is that there won’t be a lot of collapses and resets because of the quality of the ground.
“That should create a scenario where we can actually compete and have a proper scrum battle. That’ll be better for us and better for La Rochelle because we’re both scrumming teams that want to compete – it’s definitely going to make the game better and more competitive.”
The Stormers will be without several experienced players for the clash against La Rochelle. The absentees include quintet Sti Sithole, Brok Harris, Paul de Wet, Ben Loader and Courtnall Skosan. They are also without Rugby World Cup winners Marvin Orie and Steven Kitshoff, who have joined Perpignan and Ulster respectively.
“Understanding where we are in terms of maybe the personnel that we’ve lost, and the learning process that we have to go through to get our lineout to the level we’re used to is something we’re working really hard on,” said Hlungwani.
In a confident mood
“We’re very confident that the personnel we have will improve every week and we’ll get better and be able to get our lineouts to the level we require them to be at.
“I was really proud at the composure Connor Evans presented and the way he played when we lost our lineout, he didn’t lose his confidence.
“What I always say is that if they make a mistake at the lineout they mustn’t let it influence the way they’re playing. So I was chuffed to see how composed they remained, the rest of the stuff we can work on and we’ll get better.”
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