Stormers sweat on De Villiers

The Stormers' preparation for Saturday's Super 14 match against the Hurricanes at Newlands was marred by the uncertainty over the fitness of captain Jean de Villiers.

The Stormers' preparation for Saturday's Super 14 match against the Hurricanes at Newlands was marred by the uncertainty over the fitness of captain Jean de Villiers.

De Villiers has been laid low by a bout of the flu this week and he didn't take part in training at all.

On Friday, Stormers media manager Frikkie Erasmus was optimistic that the Springbok centre would be fit to lead his side this weekend.

“I spok to Jean last night and he was reasonably optimistic that he was going to be ready to play,” he said.

“Obviously we would give him all the time to recover, but we believe he will be ready. We'll just get final confirmation at the captain's run.”

Rain is expected at Newlands on Saturday and coach Rassie Erasmus doesn't expect his machine to run all that smoothly on Saturday.

Erasmus has made six changes to his team which could disrupt the fluidity that they have shown of late.

“Without a doubt we can expect some hiccups here and there. I think it happened all over this season,” said Erasmus.

“If you just look at when the Crusaders made a few changes they went down 6-3 to the Lions at half-time. A guy like Dylan (Des Fountain) hasn't played a lot of rugby over the last three, four weeks.

“The same with Schalla (Schalk Ferreira), but we've prepared for that.

“We certainly know it won't be free flowing because we know we are playing against a team who had six or seven of their games really competitive scores where they came within five or four points.

“We know its going to be a tough one and we are prepared to slug it out. We have to.”