We fancy a Sharks quarter-final

John Dobson hails the “championship” performance from the Stormers at Cape Town Stadium that sets the team on course for a potential mouth-watering Vodacom URC playoff.

The Capetonians’ 56-5 bonus-point win against Benetton on Saturday lifted them to sixth on the URC table with two rounds remaining of the league stages. It was an emphatic response from Dobson’s charges after they leaked five tries in a dramatic victory over Connacht in round 15.

“Credit to Salmaan and the players. There was a maturity to that performance,” the Stormers boss said post-match on Saturday. “It was a big week, an emotional week, because we knew we had to change dramatically to show that we’re a championship team.”

The Stormers raced into a commanding 30-0 half-time lead through tries from Sazi Sandi, Dan du Plessis and Seabelo Senatla, along with Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s precise boot, and they added four more tries via Marcel Theunissen, Leolin Zas, Paul de Villiers and Feinberg-Mngomezulu, who finished with a personal haul of 26 points.

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“We wanted to make it a statement game. We wanted our people to know that we are championship material,” Dobson said. “We want to lay on the entertainment, but more important than the entertainment today was to make sure our people see us in the quarter-final.”

With the Stormers now firmly in playoff contention and the Sharks currently occupying fourth place following nail-biting tour victories over Edinburgh and Ulster, a coastal derby quarter-final in Durban is becoming increasingly likely.

The Sharks beat the Stormers 21-15 in Durban in November before the Cape Town team claimed a narrow 24-20 win in the shadow of Table Mountain after Christmas.

Dobson relishes this potential matchup: “We’ve got to try to win every game. If we keep going like we are, we’ll probably stay local and get the Sharks… and I think that South African derby will be a nice one for us. I don’t think we’d be keen to go overseas straight away… we fancy ourselves locally.”

The Stormers have a week’s break before hosting Dragons on 10 May, followed by their final league fixture against Cardiff (16 May).

Photo: Roger Sedres/Gallo Images