CAPE TOWN - Stormers stand-in coach Rito Hlungwani is happy with the display his team put on in their 38-32 win over Griquas in Kimberley on Tuesday.
The young Stormers side played with freedom and showed promise with ball-in-hand as they ran in five tries, while other areas of their game also pleased Hlungwani, who acted as the coach for their second Preparation Series game.
“I’m very happy with our performance today, I think we showed good intent right from the start of the game, especially because we were playing against the wind so we kept ball-inhand and attacked spaces really well,” Hlungwani said.
“We managed to score five tries and our backline looked quite dangerous. We got some good interplay between backs and forwards, which I thought was brilliant.
“Our set-piece was solid, our lineouts were good, maybe a little bit of concern would be how we stopped the maul in the first half, but we slowly started improving and I think we will be improved from next week onwards.”
The visitors endured a thrilling final few minutes as Griquas fought back and scored three tries in the final quarter, but they did enough to secure the W.
“All in all I thought the players showed good character and good fight under pressure, it was a good test for us. I think we could have done better in the last 20 minutes, but we must also take into consideration that a guy, for example, like Chris Schreuder hasn’t played rugby in a long time, comes in 20 minutes to go, under pressure, so we will take that into consideration,” Hlungwani said.
“We need to give these boys chances to play. I think we did well with putting the players from the bench on – we gave Lee Marvin Mazibuko some good time, Kwenzo (Blose) got some good time, Chad (Solomon) got some good time, so our bench operated well, we’re very happy with that. You’ve got to put these guys in the pressure cooker sometimes and they have to produce. So, we are happy with the result.
“It was a tight one for my first time as head coach, my heart is still beating fast, but I will take it.
“Hopefully we can take it forward from here and keep the momentum and keep building as we head towards the Rainbow Cup.”