John Dobson praised his Stormers team for dishing out some slow poison to bag a 36-5 bonus-point-win in Saturday’s United Rugby Championship clash against Zebre Parma.
But before replacement winger Angelo Davids stonked a Zebre defender out the way to score the important fourth try in the last minute, it looked as if the Kapenaars would have to settle for four points instead of five.
Stormers boss Dobson however says getting the win was the main aim and that trying to run Zebre off their feet would have been suicide.
He explains: “We knew we could not put ourselves in a Harlem Globetrotters type shootout [against] their talent and start getting loose around defence close to rucks.
“Their nine [scrum-half Alessandro Fusco] is exceptional [at exploiting space] as you [might have seen] last week against Munster. We wanted to grind and just shut down their attack and it went according to plan.”
Dobson adds of how sy span se plan - build around some cricket tactics – helped breek Zebre: “Their defence and physicality – you may not sense it on television – but it was like a wall in front of us. And we need to build scoreboard pressure to make them chase [the game].
The Stormers also fixed their tactical kicking – especially around exits out of their 22 - that Dobson highlighted as a big reason for the previous week’s 37-24 loss to Ospreys.
He says: “Last week we had a pretty good plan but you don’t always cover everything….”