Cape Town — The Stormers are still unbeaten in the defence of their United Rugby Championship title despite last week’s draw with Ospreys, and are excited about utilising the “energy” of Frans Malherbe in Saturday’s clash against Cardiff (8.35pm kickoff).
The big Springbok tighthead prop will be one of the last Test players to be reintroduced into action following the Rugby Championship, and he will be relishing getting that engine going again ahead of the Boks’ end-of-year tour to Europe.
The Stormers haven’t had things go all their way in the scrums over the opening rounds of the URC, and having such a strong scrummager like Malherbe back in Wales will hopefully result in more front-foot ball being available for their lethal backline.
“Frans is a Springbok, highly experienced, and it’s always nice to have him around. He will definitely boost our scrum, boost our maul – just his presence in our camp ... A lot of players feed off his energy, so we are quite excited to have him here,” forwards coach Rito Hlungwani said.
But Malherbe’s contribution won’t end in the scrums, as the Cape side also want to create a better platform from the lineouts to get their maul going forward.
Ospreys managed to stop their drives at crucial times in last week’s 16-16 draw in Swansea, and the Capetonians will hope that the fast 4G pitch will also aid their attack.
“Around the maul, what they did well was to try to disrupt it before we even set it or got to the ground. You’ve seen Alun Wyn Jones being quite good at it for Wales, and they were quite successful at it and we couldn’t get our maul going,” Hlungwani said.
“We’ve worked hard on improving that, and Kitsie (Steven Kitshoff) spoke to us about how they tried to improve that around the Boks. So, we spent a couple of hours on improving that this week.
“If you want to start mauling, the battle starts in the air. Refs can’t always see everything. We do send a few clips to them, and timing is everything when it comes to maul-stopping. Ospreys must get credit as they did it in a way that the ref couldn’t see.
“We look to improve every single week. There were a few (lineout) errors that we could’ve done better in. We feel our attack is good around the lineout, and we maul really well, so it’s something we want to constantly improve.”
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