STRIKING IT RICH: On Stormers’ elephant in the room, refereeing and a flawed RWC

A LOT OF FLYING AND MONEY FOR VERY LITTLE

The excellent former English sports writer Simon Barnes wrote a brilliant book about his experiences that included a line that resonated with me. He said every time he was on a plane readying for take-off as he headed to a sports event in a distant part of the world, he questioned his sanity.

Perhaps he didn’t loathe flying for the reasons I do. Thank goodness my doctor was kind enough to prescribe me dormicum and dorminoct to help me cope. Take those pills and you arrive at your destination in a fog - quite literally. I once sat next to the then Springbok team doctor Frans Verster on a domestic flight in France and when he saw my box of dormicum he told me he’d used those as an anaesthetic on some patients.

I won’t reveal his name for obvious reasons, but I also know a Bok player from the 1990s (okay he had a medical background but it wasn’t Brendan Venter) who once told me that he took dormicum every time his in-laws were due to visit. Apparently if you take the right amount, you don’t actually go to sleep - but you also aren’t really there!

Anyway, let’s just say that I know exactly what Barnes was referring to. It’s exciting being at a Rugby World Cup, and it is worth it, but let’s get through the flying ordeal first. And the least amount of flying you have to do when you get there the better.

Perhaps it’s that thought that has always made the thought of a World Cup in Australia so much less appealing than one in France, Japan or the UK. One of the joys of being in Japan in 2019 was their rail system.

You pay for a card that gives you a couple of weeks of travel on the Bullet Train. What a wonderful way to travel. And in 2007 in France it was the TGV. In the UK the rail service is a lot slower and less efficient, but you can still get through nearly two months without actually having to fly.

Travelling by rail isn’t just better if you have a phobia against flying. Train stations are usually in the middle of cities, and there’s always less red tape to get through in terms of security checks than you have to deal with when you fly. And if you do the job I do, it is easier to work on a train than at 39 000 feet.

Unless there’s a rail system there that I don’t know about, doing the 2027 World Cup by rail is not something you will manage in Australia. And if you are thinking of going to Australia for next year’s World Cup, and are thinking of doing the Pool phase, you also need to question the bang you will get for your bucks.

🇮🇹 Adelaide 03/10/27
🇬🇪 Brisbane 10/10/27
🇷🇴 Perth 17/10/27#Springboks' #RWC2027 pool fixtures are locked in - more here: https://t.co/UNlgs8lk8N 🤝#ForeverGreenForeverGold pic.twitter.com/nyMGdefhvC — Springboks (@Springboks) February 3, 2026

The Springbok game against Italy will be the only game in the first weekend that will be between two Tier 1 nations. It is in Adelaide. If you fly into Australia through Perth, there’s a three hour domestic flight to still look forward to. If you come in through Sydney, it is one hour 40, but a much longer international flight if you fly direct to Sydney on Qantas.

But this is just the beginning. After Adelaide, the Boks are playing Georgia in Brisbane. There’s a two and a half hour flight to look forward to there. And then you could be flying up to five hours 55 minutes to the next game, which is against Romania in Perth. That’s almost halfway back to SA.

The Boks could stay in Perth for the round of 16 game, or they could be playing in Melbourne. If it’s Melbourne, you can look forward to another flight of almost four hours. If the Boks stay in Perth, then it is another long flight to either Brisbane or Sydney for the quarterfinal.

After that it’s all Sydney right through the final. There are no prizes for guessing that if I do get to the World Cup next year, I will be looking to just do round of 16 onwards. After all, we already know the results of the first three games.

EXPANDING TO 24 MEANS TOO MANY LOW KEY GAMES

Expanding the number of participating nations from 20 to 24 makes no sense. There were already too many games in the Pool phases where you knew the result before kick-off, too many complete mismatches.

If World Rugby was doing something to promote the growth of competitiveness of the Tier 2 and 3 nations, it might make sense to expand the net of nations that might experience a lift of interest in the sport through their participation.

But that is not happening, and instead the global governing body has moved in the opposite direction by ring-fencing the separate tiers through the inception of the Nations Cup next year.

I know there are some who love watching the smaller nations and don’t mind that those games will be one-sided. But I am not sure the games are appealing enough to justify the expense and travel that will be required in the Pool phase.

There is also no Pool phase jeopardy. In 2015 England dropped out of their own World Cup because they were in the same group as Australia and Wales, and the Boks had to deal with more nerves than they’d have expected to because the shock loss at the start to Japan left no room for error after that and they had to play Scotland and Samoa. In 2023 Australia never made it out of their group.

None of that will happen in next year’s event. If you look at the groups/pools you know who is going through.

STORMERS’ BLIP IS NOT DOWN TO SACHA

“So when are you going to address the elephant in the room?” The question was from someone who believes the Stormers’ mid-season blip has come about because Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu was chosen as captain and tends to sometimes follow his own script.

It is not a theory I completely disagree with. While many consider Sacha to be the best flyhalf in the world right now, my view is that we are still talking potential rather than finished article. I

t reminds me of a conversation I had with Rob Bailey, then captain of the Northamptonshire cricket team and later a top umpire, way back in 1992 when Jonty Rhodes was the new global cricketing sensation after his spectacular fielding feats at the Cricket World Cup in Australia.

“Jonty is a very talented player but he still has it all to do and it all to learn,” said Bailey while enjoying some down time during his county team’s pre-season tour of KZN.

If anything, Sacha has owned the international stage a lot more already than Jonty did in those first years of his international career. But there is a similarity - he does still have a lot to learn, and while the Stormers securing his presence until 2029 was a massive coup, he is still not the finished article. I think he will be the Bok captain in the next World Cup cycle, but by then he will be nearing his pomp. Now he is only 23. Let him grow without the burden of captaincy.

But at the same time I don’t agree with those who say he has had a series of “shockers” since assuming the captaincy. That is only the case if you are judging him by his own incredibly high standards. He inspired the two tries in the first Sharks game, he kicked two monstrous penalties to give the Stormers halftime confidence in Durban. There is never a game where he doesn’t make some telling impact.

The Stormers didn’t just lose the plot against the Sharks, it started unravelling the moment they got back from a successful overseas tour to play La Rochelle in Gqeberha in early December. That was when they started getting loose, and a drift away from what had worked started to happen.

Where they started to go wrong may have been unwittingly summed up by coach John Dobson on the eve of the first Sharks game: “At home we feel more pressure to entertain.” I have heard that there was an attitude within the camp of “Now we are home we can play real Stormers rugby”.

That to me explains why the Stormers completely veered from script, It was a group mistake, not an individual one, but now Dobson has four weeks to get everyone back on script. If he does that, my money says the Stormers will still finish in the top two in the URC. Or at worst third. They’ve built up too much credit in the bank.

STANDARD OF LOCAL REFEREEING IS A CONCERN

The Stormers never said it or used it as an excuse, and rightly not for in both games they lost to the Sharks their opponents were much the better team. But let me say it - in both coastal derbies the contest was somewhat distorted by refereeing that wasn’t up to scratch. Neither referee was up to the level required to take charge of a big local derby.

Referee ineptitude doesn’t normally effect just one team, and the Sharks would also have been confused by some calls, but particularly in the Durban game the Stormers seemed to be the team mostly on the receiving end.

The standard of SA refereeing, which was once so strong, should be a growing concern and there’s a widespread longing among coaches for the days when there were world class refs like Jaco Peyper, Craig Joubert, Jonathan Kaplan, Mark Lawrence, Andre Watson and, long before that, Freek Burger, in the local system.

THERE WILL ALWAYS BE A HOLE

It wasn’t the ref in the Durban game’s fault, but rather the fault of the game’s minders who have decreed that the TMO should be less prominent, but the whole process around the try that Adre Smith scored in the first half at Kings Park and was then chalked off was just crazy.

To those who weren’t watching, Smith went over for what looked like a perfectly good try, and Chris Allison ruled that his on-field decision was that it was a try. But, he said, “I need to go back and look at how the hole (that Smith went through) came about”.

So far from speeding the game up, and just letting the TMO check for himself while play proceeded with the conversion, it was held up by Allison marching across the Kings Park field to check the buildup to the try on the big screen.

What actually happened was that Neethling Fouche, the Stormers prop, was tackled without the ball. That was how the gap/hole opened up. As Supersport commentator Joel Stransky opined, how was it Fouche’s fault, or the Stormers’ fault, that he was tackled without the ball?

That try should have stood, but that’s not really my point - my point is that surely a hole or gap is exploited every time a try is scored. If a referee wants to go to the extreme, he can ask to look at almost every try that is scored to check that there wasn’t something contributing to “a hole opening up”.

Surely that’s not what technology is for. When technology was first introduced, it was to rule out the glaring, obvious error. There are far too many marginal incidents being checked and re-checked and tries being chalked off and it contributes to both a slowing down of the game and also, increasingly, a loss of the spontaneity that there should be in crowd celebrations.

SHARKS MUST SHOW SAME FIRE AGAINST OVERSEAS TEAMS

The Sharks are understood to be poised to announce JP Pietersen as their head coach, a promotion from his current role as interim coach. I like Pietersen as a coach and appealed to stakeholders to give him a chance when he first took over. The faith his predecessor John Plumtree, who stepped aside to give him a chance to prove himself, has been vindicated.

However, he was appointed to be interim coach until the end of the season, and the season is far from over. So if it correct is that an announcement is imminent, there is some slight hesitation over whether it is necessary to be in such a rush.

The Sharks suits brigade have made some horrible decisions since the highly capable Brian van Zyl vacated his role as CEO in 2013, and this appointment has got to be the right one. The Sharks cannot afford to keep turning over coaches.

While I think they are going for the right man, English soccer throws up several examples of interim managers who were appointed on a permanent basis only for it to go pear-shaped once the appointment became permanent and the new manager bounce, as it is known, has worn off.

My reservation is based around memory of how the Sharks performed in derbies last season. They beat the Bulls home and away, they beat the Stormers in Durban and they won the SA Shield.

The Sharks were a different team in terms of intensity, fire and commitment in their two back to back games against the Stormers, but so were they last year against the Bulls, only for it to come tumbling down when they got thumped by the Lions in Johannesburg.

The Sharks did get a lot right against the Stormers, but most of the change so far has been around attitude. and in that sense last February’s defeat in Johannesburg is a bit of a lingering red flag.

They effectively lost that game because of a soft opening, and it was a similar story against the Lions in Durban in January. Could it be that the Sharks lift themselves for the rivals that they know the best and also respect the most, perhaps the ones fielding the most players playing for Bok places?

I don’t know the answer, but what I do know is that I would want to see how they go against Munster and Cardiff in their next home games in the URC before I was completely convinced that the so-called turnaround will be a sustained one.

It’s not like Pietersen is going to be poached by another franchise or club in the meantime. There’s an audit underway and the Sharks are doing the right thing by establishing what positions are needed in a revised structure before they fit names to the positions.

But it’s been more than 12 years of torment at the Sharks, they can afford to take an extra month before making any far reaching decisions.