Cape Town - Pat Lambie’s right arm is not covered in tattoos and he’s also 10cm shorter, and 10kg lighter, than Australia’s Quade Cooper. Despite these obvious physical differences, Lambie will be doing his level best to impersonate the Wallabies playmaker when the Sharks stomp on to Newlands to battle the Stormers on Saturday night.
Just to be clear, Cooper is not in town. But he was when the 2011 Reds became the first team to discover tactical chinks of daylight in the Stormers’ now-renowned defensive wall.
Sharks director of rugby Gary Gold hinted that it was these chinks he wants Lambie to expose on Saturday night.
“The Stormers defence is great, it is so tried and tested,” Gold told Weekend Argus earlier this week. “But there are reasons why it’s so good. No defence can cover every option, it has to give something away somewhere. We’ve worked out something that the Stormers do give away and we’re hoping to use that against them.”
The Stormers are unbeaten after three matches, and they were unbeaten after six in April of 2011 when Cooper and the Queenslanders dropped in for a visit.
Up until that point, the six teams that had dashed themselves against the Stormers’ defensive ramparts had averaged 107 carries and 18 kicks per game.
The Reds turned that trend on its head, limiting their attack to just 72 runs in support of a kicking game that fired a salvo of 34 missiles. They won 19-6.
Cooper was the executor of a plan based on punishing the Stormers for over-zealous line defence. The Reds identified that their unbeaten Cape opponents were so competent at stopping a ground attack because they committed everybody but the fullback to the cause. That left Gio Aplon alone at the back to cover kicks.
Cooper and halfback partner Will Genia spent the afternoon sucker-punching the Stormers back three with kicks that circumvented the defensive line, and put pressure on the hosts in their half. Three games later, the Crusaders made 80 carries and put boot to ball 33 times at Newlands to hand the Stormers their second loss of the season.
And it was a similar recipe that served Western Province up for dinner in the 2013 Currie Cup final at Newlands. Brendan Venter, who serves as a consultant on Gold’s management team, prepped the Sharks to ambush the hosts with a variety of kicks into the no man’s land behind the defensive line.
Allister Coetzee believes that variety is Lambie’s distinctive quality. “His uniqueness is in his variation of the game, so we will have to expect the unexpected,” said the Stormers coach. “If it’s a kicking game, he’s on a ticky, if it’s a running game, he’s got a great pass, and if it’s taking the ball to the line, he can do that too.”
In 2011, 28-year-old Aplon was able to lean on the experience of Super Rugby champion and ace winger, Bryan Habana, who was 27 at the time.
On Saturday night, Cheslin Kolbe, 21, will be the puppet-master keeping the Stormers wings on strings. He, together with Dillyn Leyds and Johnny Kotze, both 22, will be responsible for countering Lambie’s kicking attack. The Stormers back three will have to contend with the superior experience of Sharks chasers Odwa Ndungane and Lwazi Mvovo, the gargantuan midfield tandem of Frans Steyn and JP Pietersen, and two more supersized backs in replacements Andre Esterhuizen and Jack Wilson.
The Sharks’ plan is a danger to the Stormers’ perfect record, but that won’t concern Kolbe, who would have slept peacefully last night, perhaps comforted by a picture of Eben Etzebeth tucked under his pillow.
Lambie needs a stage to perform his Cooper impersonation, and that puts the onus on the Sharks pack to quell Stormers tempests such as Etzebeth. The rampaging lock is back from an extended injury-absence, and he’ll be determined to mark his return with trademark aggression and brute force at the point of contact. Fellow Springbok Siya Kolisi will feel the same way about his first start of the season, while fate has conspired to give Scarra Ntubeni an opportunity to prove that he should never have lost the No 2 jersey to Bongi Mbonambi, who went down with a shoulder injury in training this week.
The bench also features heavies with an appetite for destruction – Schalk Burger is set to make his 98th Super Rugby appearance while rising enforcer lock Jean Kleyn has recovered from a hamstring injury.
Gold is no doubt hopeful that fit-again Bok bruiser Willem Alberts significantly upgrades the production from his forward unit. The Sharks chief also knows that, without increased output, any attempt by Lambie to implement a kicking attack from behind a losing pack will have disastrous consequences.
“We have an appreciation for the fact that, if we kick poorly, the Stormers will hurt us,” he said.
Kolbe is stretching his legs. Etzebeth is cracking his knuckles.
Stormers:15 Cheslin Kolbe, 14 Johnny Kotze, 13 Juan de Jongh, 12 Damian de Allende, 11 Dillyn Leyds, 10 Demetri Catrakilis, 9 Nic Groom, 8 Duane Vermeulen (captain), 7 Siya Kolisi, 6 Nizaam Carr, 5 Manuel Carizza, 4 Eben Etzebeth, 3 Vincent Koch, 2 Scarra Ntubeni, 1 Steven Kitshoff. Replacements: 16 Neil Rautenbach, 17 Alistair Vermaak, 18 Frans Malherbe, 19 Jean Kleyn, 20 Schalk Burger, 21 Louis Schreuder, 22 Kurt Coleman, 23 Huw Jones
Sharks:15 SP Marais, 14 Odwa Ndungane, 13 JP Pietersen, 12 Francois Steyn, 11 Lwazi Mvovo, 10 Patrick Lambie, 9 Cobus Reinach, 8 Ryan Kankowski, 7 Willem Alberts, 6 Marcell Coetzee, 5 Pieter-Steph du Toit, 4 Lubabalo Mtyanda, 3 Matt Stevens, 2 Bismarck du Plessis (captain), 1 Thomas du Toit. Replacements: 16 Kyle Cooper, 17 Dale Chadwick, 18 Lourens Adriaanse, 19 Marco Wentzel, 20 Renaldo Bothma, 21 Conrad Hoffmann, 22 André Esterhuizen, 23 Jack Wilson
Referee: Jaco Peyper.
Kick-off:7.10pm. TV: SS1.
Weekend Argus