Important rugby tour for Stormers

• Published date: 08 May 2024
• Publication title: Herald, The (Port Elizabeth, South Africa)

The Stormers beat Stade Francais in the Investec Champions Cup in January and more recently they also scored a good win in a friendly against Northampton Saints at Franklin Gardens in March

But you have to go back to October 8 2022 to when they last won a URC game in the northern hemisphere.

That was in Parma against Zebre, with Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu emerging as the man of the match in a 37-20 victory.

But the following week a long winning sequence that had started at the halfway point of the previous season in the URC was ended when they were held to a draw by the Ospreys in Swansea and a week later they were beaten by Cardiff.

Their best overseas URC result since then was the 22-all draw with a strong Leinster team on March 24 last year, a result that was particularly noteworthy in the sense that while they didn’t have all their international players playing for them, the Six Nations was over and there were Ireland players back in the home team.

Indeed, the perception that the Stormers are poor overseas or not suited to playing there does sometimes require some examination.

One of their best performances of this season, for instance, was the opening Champions Cup game against Leicester Tigers at Welford Road.

The Stormers lost and conceded a late try that lost them a losing bonus point, but they were pressing for a famous win with three minutes to go and that was with a second string team.

Now that we’ve seen Glasgow Warriors beat just about all visitors to the Scotstoun since then, their last-gasp defeat in a game where they gave as good as they got and were actually unlucky to lose...