Cape Town - Canterbury Crusaders dominated territory and possession to inflict a 19-14 defeat on the Stormers in a windy Super Rugby clash at Newlands on Saturday.
The Crusaders put pressure on the Stormers' set pieces all game, winning six of the home team's lineouts and holding the ascendancy in the scrums.
“We wanted to play territory - they have good goalkickers so we didn't want them to tick the scoreboard over. We wanted to play at their end,” Crusaders flyhalf Tyler Bleyendaal said in a TV interview after the game.
The Crusaders are fifth in the table with 20 points, seven points behind the Brumbies in first place. The Stormers are 10th.
The Stormers briefly had the upper hand in the first half as they took an 11-0 lead, before the Crusaders began to take control and were in front by two points at the break.
After Joe Pietersen had given the home side the lead via a penalty, Siya Kolisi burrowed over the try line from close range after the Stormers had taken the ball forward from an uncontested lineout.
Pietersen missed the simple conversion, but when he landed another penalty the home team had a healthy advantage.
That prefaced a shift in momentum, though, for the Crusaders responded by dominating the rest of the match.
“After a good start we went to bed - the attitude was not there, the commitment lacked at times. It was one of those days where everybody was just a bit flat,” Stormers captain Jean de Villiers said.
“The set piece was misfiring, there were missed tackles and handling errors.”
Fullback Tom Marshall sliced the Stormers' defence open with a lung-busting run after Dewaldt Duvenage had kicked aimlessly downfield. The ball found its way to Sam Whitelock, who released loose forward Matt Todd to score.
Bleyendaal began to control the match with his kicking out of hand, keeping the Stormers penned in their own half and under the cosh.
The pressure inevitably led to errors and the home side gifted two penalty opportunities to Bleyendaal before the half was out to hand the visitors the lead.
It was more of the same in the second half, the Crusaders camped in the Stormers' half and only kept at bay by some heroic defending.
The Canterbury team took the ball through 26 phases in one attack, much of that in the Stormers' 22, before the South Africans finally managed to clear the danger.
Stormers frustrations boiled over when number eight Duane Vermeulen tipped Zac Guildford off the ground and over as the winger hung on to him after he had made a tackle. He received a yellow card to add to his side's woes.
Bleyendaal extended the Crusaders' lead from the penalty, but they could not take advantage of their numerical advantage despite spending much of the next 10 minutes in the home 22.
On a rare breakout the Stormers closed the deficit to two points through a Pietersen penalty as they doggedly clung on.
Bleyendaal landed another three points to increase the lead to five again.
Finally the Stormers found their rhythm and it was they who had all the ball in the closing stages. Pietersen turned down three kickable penalties to instead set up the lineout, but the Crusaders' defence showed resilience. – Reuters