You would forgive the Cape Town faithful for high blood pressure this Easter weekend as their DHL Stormers side rose from the dead to beat Ulster 13-7 in a tense Vodacom United Rugby Championship arm wrestle on Saturday night.
There is something about contests between these two sides that automatically raises stress levels, especially as Ulster seem to outperform so many other sides in the URC in the way they raise the game against John Dobson’s side.
After so many close and sometimes controversial games before this, it wasn’t a surprise that it happened once again.
It took a late try five minutes from the end from Evan Roos, off the back of a lineout drive to get them ahead for the first time in the game, and as he normally does in these games, Manie Libbok drove the last nails into the coffin with a textbook conversion and penalty on fulltime to seal the victory.
But it was a far cry from most of the game that the Northern Irish side dominated, and the Stormers were very lucky to only be 7-0 behind at the break.
Ulster’s dominance was so profound that they had almost 70 per cent possession and territory and the Stormers, when they got hold of the ball, were their own worst enemies, and counted handling error after handling error.
For a large part it felt as if the Stormers were trying too hard, overplaying their hand at times, and trying for the flashy passes instead of bucking down and grinding out their options on the scoreboard.
Handling errors came as 50-50 passes were thrown and while it looked sexy and impressive, those attacks only matter when they finish in a try.
It was almost too easy for Ulster at times to defend, as they targeted the players who were throwing the offloads and the Stormers struggled to get their balance right between sending the ball wide and buckling down and playing it more tactically. – SuperSport.