Stormers face leadership void in final week

The DHL Stormers will go into the final week of their Vodacom Super Rugby tour of Australasia facing a bit of a leadership void.

The Stormers complete a four-match tour by playing the Rebels in Melbourne on Friday morning and few will be rating their chances of returning with a win given that the bulk of their leadership group will be watching the game on television in South Africa.

Lock Chris van Zyl, who captained Western Province to Currie Cup success in 2017 and is one of the alternative captains when Siya Kolisi is not available to play, is one of two players who have been forced to return home because of injury.

Van Zyl will be out for six weeks as he nurses a back injury. The other player coming home because of injury is SP Marais, who appeared to injure his hip flexor when trying to convert Damian de Allende’s second-half try in the 24-12 defeat to the Reds in Brisbane at the weekend.

The loss of the Van Zyl captaincy option is particularly critical this week as it turns out that Kolisi will be missing the last week of the tour because of the Springbok resting protocol.

Kolisi will be returning to Cape Town on the same flight as Van Zyl and Marais. When he returns home he will join Van Zyl and other would be leaders such as Eben Etzebeth and Pieter-Steph du Toit in watching the game from afar.

Springbok prop Frans Malherbe has captained the side before, as has Damian de Allende, and one of those two will probably lead the team against the Australian form team.

The remaining member of the probable starting team who is a member of the leadership core is Dillyn Leyds.

But it is far from an ideal situation for the Stormers, though the recall of Kolisi to Cape Town and the decision not to fly Du Toit back to Australia - something that was mentioned as an option last week when he flew home to be at the birth of his child - suggests that they may be putting all their eggs into the home basket.

The bulk of their last eight games they play after the Rebels will be in Cape Town at a Newlands venue that has become a bit of a fortress in recent years.

ALL HANDS ON DECK FOR DERBY

They face the Brumbies the week after they get back and will be expected to win that, but the game that is looming as a massive fixture on the Stormers calendar is the 27 April return showdown with the Bulls team that humiliated them at Loftus in their opening game.

Like the Stormers, the Bulls were under-strength at the weekend, and like the Stormers against the Reds it played a big role in their defeat to the Jaguares.

But the Bulls don't look the force they were a few weeks ago, and appear to be struggling with confidence subsequent to the massive defeat to the Chiefs a fortnight ago.

Although they won in Durban before their defeat to the Jaguares, that wasn't a good performance and they were decidedly fortunate to come away with a positive result.

The Stormers will be hoping they have all hands back on deck for the derby, and if Du Toit, Etzebeth, Kolisi and company are all there and have been freshened up, it would be a brave person who bets against them winning at Newlands, a venue that hasn't been a happy hunting ground for the Bulls for most of the past decade.

For his part, Stormers coach Robbie Fleck is hoping that his team will pick up the momentum at home that could put his side not just back into the hunt, but propel them to the top of the local pile.

Although they are last in the conference at present, there are only seven points separating them from the table-topping Sharks, who have already lost twice at home this season, including to the Stormers.

By the end of their tour, the Stormers would have played six of eight matches away from Newlands. All the other local teams still have to go to Australasia.

"When we return to South Africa the majority of matches will be at home. We are still in the picture and we have big name players that will return," said Fleck.

Given that the Stormers went into the Reds game with seven changes, there has been a bit of an over-reaction to their defeat.

OLD SAYING HOLDS TRUE

It was always going to be a 50/50 game when it was learned they'd be without Etzebeth and Du Toit, and with Steven Kitshoff and Bongi Mbonambi playing off the bench.

And as Fleck rightly stated afterwards, it was the yellow carding of Kolisi on the stroke of halftime that ultimately made the difference.

"The yellow card was a critical moment. The Reds deserve credit for the manner in which they exploited it in the first 10 minutes of the second half. They took their chances and did well to win."

The Reds scored two tries in that period, taking what was a scoreless stalemate at that point to a 14-0 lead.

But while Fleck is right when he says it was a telling moment, perhaps he and his fellow coaches also need to take a good look at themselves with regard to on-field strategy.

The wide game geared towards getting the ball to the outside channels that they have employed in the last two matches may please their supporters (or at least it would if they scored some tries), but it plays away from the more direct strengths that saw them to successive wins over the Lions, Sharks and Jaguares before they left South Africa.

The Stormers were pilloried when they appeared to rely almost exclusively on their forwards against the Hurricanes, but since then they appear to have over-corrected.

It also may not be coincidental that the Hurricanes game, the one where supposedly they relied too heavily on the big men, was the one they came closest to winning.

It's a cliche and is often over-used in modern rugby, but the old saying that "You earn the right to go wide" nonetheless holds as true now as it ever has.

It has been forgotten by the Stormers - admittedly they probably feel they need to play to different strengths when Etzebeth and company aren't there and the Reds are also a physical team - and the sooner they remember it the sooner they may have a chance of returning to their winning ways.

The two players who have been called out from South Africa to replace those who are returning home are hooker Chad Solomons and centre Dan Kriel.