The Stormers head coach John Dobson has sought to play down the celebrations among his players, and particularly hooker Joseph Dweba, when Munster beat Leinster in the URC semi-finals by stressing that this was in the context of the Stormers thus having home advantage in the final when hosting Munster in Cape Town Stadium on Saturday (6.30pm local/5.30pm Irish).
A video of Dweba leading the Stormers celebrations was leaked on social media, and a day out from the final, Dobson said: “I am really disappointed that video got out and published and we have to look at ourselves there. My view is, you tell me any rugby team in the world, especially with our mission here in Cape Town, who wouldn’t celebrate playing at home?
“People think you’re celebrating because we’re playing Munster? No, no. We’re celebrating because of what this has brought to the city,” said Dobson, pointing to the 5,000 travelling Red Army and the 55,000 sell-out, before explaining that the video was taken while the players were in a suite in the stadium after their semi-final win over Connacht.
Dobson acknowledged that the video has most likely been used “in Munster team talks, no question, everyone would do the same thing” and that Dweba’s choice of language was “unfortunate”. The Stormers hooker chanted: ‘We are gonna fuck them up’ in the video clip.
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“I think we owe Joseph an apology about that but anybody who sees it as a slight against Munster is completely wrong,” added Dobson. “We’ve never beaten Munster. We got a hiding in Limerick, they ended our 21 or 22 game winning record here. So we’re not going to celebrate playing Munster, they have British and Irish Lions, RG Snyman is one of the best players in the world.
“Joseph’s thing was shared exuberance. I can’t use the language here but I feel we let ourselves down by letting that video go out because I have no doubt it has been used as a motivational trick. But I don’t think any team would have reacted any different to us.”
The episode could stoke any ill-feelings from Munster’s 26-24 win over the Stormers 26-24 in Cape Town six weeks ago. “There was some poor behaviour from us as well,” said Dobson of that game.
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“We spoke early in the week about not doing it. We can’t give away penalties against Munster, I’d imagine that while I’m not saying they’ll be going out doing cheap shots, they will try and get under our skin a little bit. They have got guys with trip-switches, that’s the truth and we’ve seen that the last few weeks.”
Graham Rowntree maintained: “We’ve got enough to worry about than worrying about a video of some guys cheering about playing at home again. It’s not been a huge discussion point in our camp. We move on. We’ve enough to deal with getting our game better.”
Rain affected both captain’s runs on the already churned up pitch, with more forecast for Saturday, but Rowntree countered: “Have you been to Ireland? we’re used to dealing with wet pitches. It’s another challenge, we deal with various challenges, the pitch, weather, we’ll get on with it.
“We’ve had some huge performances in the last five weeks in difficult places. It would be incredible for the club. This is not an easy trophy to win. But we’ll deal with how we can make that happen.
“We’ll approach the game as another game and control what we can. Going into the games, be aware of what Stormers are trying to do to us and what we’ve got to do better in our game.”
