Is it now or never for the Stormers?

The DHL Stormers have made no attempt to hide the importance of their final tour match against the Rebels in Melbourne on Friday, but have they reached the “now or never” part of their campaign?

That may depend on how you think they will fare in the eight matches they play mostly at Newlands, and almost all on South African soil, when they get home. The Stormers are a different animal at Newlands, which is where they will play six of the last eight games, with the other two games being in Buenos Aires and Johannesburg.

The Crusaders are the toughest opponents the Stormers will face at home, the rest are all teams they have beaten in Cape Town in recent years. Their chances of winning in Argentina might depend on whether they have their first choice pack available for that trip - if so, they can certainly win there. And the Lions have lost both their previous derbies played this season at Emirates Airlines Park, and by quite a margin.

The nuts and bolts of it, as coach Robbie Fleck sees it, is that as it stands now the Stormers need to win six of their remaining nine games.

“We thought about it in the pre-season, and yes, nine is the figure we have in the back of our minds,” said Fleck from Melbourne after naming his team for the Rebels game.

“Our plan is to try and win every game, but we know that nine is usually the number of wins you need in order to qualify for the play-offs. Not necessarily to top the conference, but to advance to the play-offs. Last year nine wins got the Lions to the top of the conference, but in some previous years it required more than that.”

Fleck said that if the Stormers beat the Rebels in the last game and thus returned with a record of four wins in eight starts from the first half of the season, he’d be happy and confident of his team’s chances of making the knock-outs. That would leave them needing to win five of their last eight.

“We knew we had six of the first eight games away and that this stage of the season would be tough. We went into this campaign with a lot of confidence, and although we haven’t done as well as we feel we should have, we still have that confidence and believe we did well enough to win more games than we have.

“We’d like to go back with four wins in eight. That is not ideal, but certainly not the end of the world either. We are still playing well enough in our view to have a strong second half of the competition when we play a lot of successive games at Newlands. Right now the focus is just to work hard and keep the group together.”

The group should see several additions when they get home. Eben Etzebeth, Pieter-Steph du Toit, JD Schickerling, skipper Siya Kolisi, Sikhumbuzo Notshe and others will make a difference to the Stormers when they return, and certainly make the forward pack look particularly formidable.

Not that Fleck is lacking confidence in the chances that the pack that has been assembled for the Melbourne game can do the job. He has been excited by the energy brought in by the newcomers, and seems quietly confident that the Stormers could surprise the Rebels, who have been Australia’s top team in Super Rugby in the first half of the season.

Will a defeat be a train smash and signal the end of the Stormers challenge for silverware? No it won’t, but what it will do is leave very little leeway for them to drop any games at home - they will need to win six in eight - and in that sense they will have the pressure of being on a knock-out footing from now on. A win over the Rebels might just ease some of that pressure.

A lot will also depend on what happens elsewhere in a South African conference that is starting to look spectacularly mediocre. At the moment there is just one win but, because of bonus points, seven points separating the cellar-dwelling Stormers from the front-running Sharks. If the Sharks beat the Jaguares in Durban then the gap could be as much as 12.

Even given that the Sharks still have to travel, and have played a lot more home games up to now, that will be a big gap for the Stormers to make up if they want to win the conference.