Dominated in all areas of the game by Racing 92, the Stormers and their revamped team have reignited the debate surrounding the importance of the Champions Cup in the eyes of the South African provinces…
In the imagination of the Stormers, Paris was until now a tangle of illustrious frescoes: Haussmannian elegance, cuisine of undeniable finesse and, wherever the eyes looked, a master painting, an open-air museum. Did the fantasy survive the reality of this unfortunate weekend? We couldn't swear to it and a few hours before the kick-off of their fourth regular phase match, the rugby players from Cape Town were forced to file a complaint with the Boulogne-Billancourt police station, a burglar having broken in in one of the lounges of the Radisson hotel hosting them that day. Theft? It included the suitcase of a member of the South African staff and a computer containing nothing other than a pile of game actions, touches and scrums… The sporting extension of this so banal news item was for the Stormers just as gloomy and, at Paris-La Défense-Arena, Salmaan Moerat's teammates conceded thirty points a few weeks after having eaten fifty, against Harlequins…
In fact, the Stormers are, along with the Sharks, the best South African province and, with Mannie Libbok, Herschel Jantjies, Frans Malherbe and Damian Willemse, are some of the proudest current Springboks. But then, why did they compete in the Champions Cup with the handbrake? Why was Libbok, the Boks opener, spared on Saturday evening when he would have been a wonderful asset on this nervous, feverish and ultra-fast pitch? What right had the staff also deprived Warrick Gelant, transformed since his departure from Hauts-de-Seine two years ago, of a revenge that he so desired? And why the hell were Malherbe and Jantjies only substitutes at Nanterre? Perhaps because the Stormers had made their next match, in the URC against Leinster, their priority at the moment… Perhaps also because they are clashing, like the Durban Sharks and the Pretoria Bulls, in this competition which has for them the slightest relief, the slightest historical anchor… The Champions Cup is well and truly emptied of its meaning, since it broke its natural borders to play the balancing act between two hemispheres.
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