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Reds exploit yellow card and Stormers sloppiness

rugby05 April 2019 10:49| © Cycle Lab
By:JJ Harmse
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Siya Kolisi © Getty Images
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The Reds scored twice in the 10 minutes Siya Kolisi was off the field to lay the platform for a 24-12 victory over the DHL Stormers in a scrappy Vodacom Super Rugby match at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane on Friday.

The teams went to halftime with a nil-all scoreline and apart from two narrow try scoring misses from the Stormers, the only real talking point of the opening 40 minutes was the yellow card dished out by referee Marius van der Westhuizen to Stormers captain Kolisi. The flanker was pinged for not rolling away after a tackle on the stroke of the break.

It could be considered a soft yellow card - even the Australian commentators seemed to think it was arbitrary - but it was to cost the Cape side as the Reds suddenly came alive straight after halftime and exploited the extra man advantage. Within a couple of minutes of the restart they had crossed for two tries and what had been an even game was suddenly heavily weighted in favour of the Reds.

Kolisi, being typically honest and forthright, blamed indiscipline afterwards for the defeat, meaning his own, but in truth the Stormers could have struck back had it not been for their high error rate and general all-round sloppiness. While it was the 10 minutes after the break that made the difference, the Reds did boss most of the second half and, apart from handling errors and poor decision-making, the Stormers also missed too many tackles.

In the first 25 minutes it looked like the Stormers might be on their way to what would have been their first win overseas in the last 11 attempts. They had the Reds stretched when they ran the ball to the outside channels and on several occasions built up with promising, enterprising attacks. But it was again one of those games where the last pass let them down, or they made some other mistake after doing all the hard work.

One example was a Stormers counter-attack from deep in their own half after prop Corne Fourie had done well to affect a turn-over. The break out featured some good handling skills and running. Dillyn Leyds and Damian de Allende were both prominent before eventually, with a try looking more probable than just possible, Cobus Wiese knocked it on metres from the line.

It might not have been Wiese’s fault, he didn’t look like he was set to receive a pass, but it summed up the Stormers’ night, as did the Kolisi knock-on after the first really good Stormers rolling maul of the night later on. Perhaps even more pertinent though, from a Stormers viewpoint, were the two times they crossed the chalk only to have the tries disallowed.

Both calls made by the TMO were correct, but both were also originally deemed to be tries by the ref’s onfield call. The first was when fullback Damian Willemse chased down a good kick from De Allende to dot down, only for the ball to touch the chalk of the deadball line.

The second came a few minutes later when excellent footwork from Sergeal Petersen propelled him over in the right corner, only for the slow motion replay to show that his foot had just touched the line a millisecond before he touched the ball down.

If you think back to the previous week, when Leyds looked like he had scored - the referee had already awarded it on that occasion - only for the try to be disallowed. This does appear to be a recurring theme for the Stormers. They’ve had enough narrow misses recently to consider themselves jinxed, and it was probably what Kolisi meant when he said afterwards, "The ball didn’t fall on our side tonight".

No, they didn’t have the rub of the green, but then you also make your own luck, and perhaps the narrow misses are starting to affect the Stormers mentally. Each time they crossed the players looked like they felt they had scored.

The bottom line though is that there does seem to be an indefinable something missing - maybe clinical is the word we're looking for, and that in turn feeds off confidence - from the Stormers at the moment. Find whatever that missing element is and they might rise from the mediocre look that they have at the moment to the winning team they could easily have been in the two games in New Zealand.

The Reds deserved to win this game. The Stormers were all over them in the first quarter but were too sloppy after that and the Reds were definitely the better team in the second half. The first try was scored a minute into the half, with Samu Kerevi, who became more and more prominent the longer the game lasted, starting the attack and then taking the return pass from his midfield partner to score.

Almost immediately the Reds, clearly intent on making their numerical advantage count while they had it, were back into Stormers territory, the Stormers were missing tackles and looking stretched, and the Reds went over through Brandon Paenga-Mosa. Suddenly it was 14-0, and Kolisi was still off the field.

When the Stormers scored through Kobus van Dyk, who went over next to the posts off an attacking scrum, soon after Kolisi’s return to the field, they had hope. Kolisi’s return also coincided with the arrival on the field of Steven Kitshoff, Bongi Mbonambi and Herschel Jantjies, and frustrated Stormers fans would have dared to dream.

But it must be exceedingly frustrating to be a Stormers fan right now, at least when they are overseas, for they keep flattering only to deceive, and conspiring against themselves.

They looked tired in the last quarter, which is understandable given that they are on a long tour, but it doesn’t exonerate them - in the previous two matches on tour they lost to good teams, the Reds are no better than mediocre.

Reds scrumhalf Tate McDermott, the most influential player on the field, fittingly got over the chalk when he took a quick tap to stretch the Reds’ advantage back to 14 points. But then came two more of those moments that sum up the Stormers and their luck at the moment.

First, Kolisi was millimetres short, if indeed he was, as he went over the line with nine minutes to go, and then with seven minutes to go, after Damian de Allende had scored off a sharp little switch from Jantjies, replacement SP Marais missed the relatively simple conversion that would have put the Stormers back into the game.

That really was that as far as the Stormers’ hopes of breaking their long overseas losing sequence was concerned.

Scores

Reds 24 - Tries: Samu Kerevi, Brandon Paengo-Mosa and Tate McDermott; Conversions: Bryce Hegarty 3; Penalty: Bryce Hegarty. DHL Stormers 12 - Tries: Kobus van Dyk and Damian de Allende; Conversion: Jean-Luc du Plessis.

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