Ashfak Mohamed
CAPTAIN Jean de Villiers says talk of possible changes to the Stormers coaching and management teams “hurts” the team, but that the players were not turning their backs on one another and “are sticking together”.
The under-fire Stormers find themselves at a crossroads of sorts heading into Saturday’s final tour match against the Reds in Brisbane.
They have lost four out of their five games this season – their worst start to Super Rugby since 2001 – and following last week’s 25-15 defeat to the Brumbies, a crisis meeting was held in Brisbane on Sunday night.
Western Province Rugby Union president Thelo Wakefield told the Cape Times afterwards that changes would be made to various areas of team management as he “cannot allow the Stormers team to deteriorate any longer”.
Since then, it has been mooted that former coach Gert Smal would be roped in as a director of rugby and ex-Springbok mental coach Henning Gericke could attend to any psychological issues.
“Not unsettling, but (the talk of change) definitely, in a way, hurts in that we are all in this together – management and players collectively,” De Villiers said yesterday.
“To sort of place the blame on one or two guys is always tough. But we’ve made a decision as a squad that we will just stick to what we know, keep on putting in the hard work, and hopefully get a result this weekend.”