It’s about learning from defeat

As the Stormers rolled over the Crusaders at Newlands last Friday night, someone in the press box remarked that it was a great pity the Stormers had conspired against themselves in at least two of the three close games they have lost this season.

It is true that had they won just one of the three games that they lost by one, two and three points, with the Brumbies and Western Force matches being gifts to the opposition, the Stormers would now be assured of a home semi-final.

It remains a remarkable feature of the Stormers season that the matches they have lost have been by such narrow margins, while their wins have tended to be by the proverbial mile.

Not one of their eight victims has come within 10 points of the Stormers, let alone the seven you need to garner a bonus point. Of the five wins scored against New Zealand opposition, the closest one was the 12 point victory in Auckland over the Blues. That is some record.

And yet while this suggests the Stormers should not be dropping games like those to the three Australian sides, I cannot quite go along with the theory that had those three games been won, the Stormers would now be sitting unbeaten at the top of the log.

It just doesn’t work like that, and while it is an over-used old cliché, that little phrase about learning something from defeat is nonetheless a meaningful and relevant one. In a tough competition like the Super 14, you have to accept that there will be days you are slightly off your game, and most opponents in this competition are good enough to punish you when you are.

Just ask the Waratahs, who ended up being thumped by the Highlanders, or the Crusaders, who were well beaten by the Western Force before they came to South Africa.

What matters is what you learn from those defeats and how you bounce back. If you look at the Stormers’ season in sequence, there is a pattern that may not just be coincidence.

After the Brumbies game, where there was so much disappointment down Newlands way, the Stormers hosted the Highlanders. They gave them a big beating. After the Force match it was a similar story, with this time the Blues being the victims in Auckland. This past week it was the same story again – a hiccup against the Reds was followed by a massive win over the Crusaders.

In each of those losses the Stormers learned things that they corrected and then applied the following week. This past week it was patience, which was about making sure that periods of dominance are translated into points. The Stormers did not score lots of tries initially, and another Stormers team may well have been frustrated by the tigerish, physical Crusaders defence.

Indeed, there were times in the first half that it looked like the Stormers might never find their way through the Crusaders to score a try. But it didn’t bother Schalk Burger’s men – they just kept hammering away, and instead of tries, the pressure created penalties. Once there was daylight between the teams on the scoreboard, the Crusaders were forced to play catch-up, and the tries started to come.

It was an object lesson on what can be achieved by patience, something that wasn’t applied the previous week in Brisbane. In that game a long period of territorial dominance was wasted by lack of discipline on attack, with too many 50/50 passes leading to wasted opportunities.

Had the Brisbane defeat not happened, would the Stormers have been as impressive in displaying the virtue of patience against the Crusaders? We will never know the answer to that question, but it is possible that they wouldn’t have, and a victory against the Reds might well have been followed by defeat against the Crusaders.

The big challenge for the Stormers now is that they hold onto what they learned in their last two games, and apply it in the next two against the Sharks and the Bulls. If they do so, Newlands will be hosting their first Super 14 semi-final since 1999 on the weekend of 22 May.

With the Bulls already virtually assured of home ground advantage in the play-offs, it will be a special weekend for South African rugby and a Loftus final between two of rugby’s fiercest traditional rivals would then become a distinct possibility.