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Joe Pietersen returns to the Stormers team at No 15.
ZELIM NEL
JOE PIETERSEN and Gary van Aswegen will reacquaint themselves with Super Rugby when they run out for the Stormers in a pre-season match at Newlands on Friday night, but there will be no time for small talk against a bristling Lions side that looks hungry to lay down a marker.
Pietersen has returned from a two-season stint with French club Bayonne to fill the Stormers jersey vacated by fullback Conrad Jantjes (who has joined Biarritz), while flyhalf Van Aswegen will make his first start since suffering a season-ending knee injury against the Lions in April last year.
The duo promise to add the tactical firepower that was so sorely lacking in 2011 and their speedy familiarisation is therefore central to the Stormers’ hopes of making a fast start to the competition which kicks off at the end of February.
With Pietersen at fullback, the 2010 Stormers relied on a dominant kicking game, ranked third in the competition, to streak into the Super 14 final.
But the departure of Pietersen and flyhalf Willem de Waal to Europe left scrumhalf Dewaldt Duvenage as the team’s only accomplished kicker, and the Stormers ended last season with the eighth-ranked kicking attack.
While coach Allister Coetzee was unable to select the likes of Duvenage, locks Rynhardt Elstadt and Andries Bekker, and No 8 Duane Vermeulen, who are all making their way back from injury, his Lions counterpart has chosen his strongest combinations for this week’s warm-up match.
With the exception of injured flyhalf Elton Jantjies, coach John Mitchell has deployed frontline players in what appears to be a bid to build on the psychological edge gleaned by the Lions when they knocked Western Province out of last year’s Currie Cup semi-final.
It will be interesting to see how the Stormers cope, given that the match marks the first for many of Coetzee’s stalwarts, including skipper Schalk Burger, Gio Aplon, Juan de Jongh, Jean de Villiers and Bryan Habana.
Mitchell has revived the Lions on a foundation of supreme conditioning, as evidenced by their high-octane Currie Cup title run last year.
This fitness, coupled with the presence of established fetchers in the Lions line-up, will stretch the home team’s defence and challenge their continuity on attack.
The Stormers have replaced flanker Francois Louw – who joined English club Bath during the off-season – with Namibian fetcher Rohan Kitshoff, but the latter has not been selected for this match.
Instead, Burger, ball-carrying flanker Siya Kolisi and athletic No 8 Nick Koster have been tasked with contesting possession at the breakdown against underrated Lions fetcher Derick Minnie and backline ball-hawk Doppies la Grange.
Coetzee rightly expects all of his charges to create turnovers, but Burger’s transition into more of a linking role in recent seasons, combined with the absence of a proven fetcher in the pack, could take the sting out of the Stormers’ vaunted defence.
Though it is foolish to read too much into a pre-season match, a win against the Lions will go some way towards erasing the doubts spawned by WP’s uninspiring Currie Cup semi-final exit.
