DHL Stormers' head coach John Dobson admitted that their performance against Zebre Parma was not their best of the season.
“We had a very strong template towards the back end of last season, start of this season. We may have varied a bit too much this week. I hate using the term “overplayed,” but in some areas, we probably pushed it a little bit when we actually wanted to be really direct.”
“It wasn’t our best performance. Whether the reasons were the time that we played, or that it was a long day.”
“Despite the pressure exerted by Zebre, it still wasn’t our best showing. We wanted to be direct. Zebre introduced us to seeing space, and they closed it down very well.”
“What’s pleasing is our lineouts and maul is going well, our scrum won a few penalties, but I felt those came a little bit later than they did in the previous games. We didn’t have it quite as easy at scrum time, but if you’re without Ntuthuko Mchunu, Neethling, Sazi, and Frans. I thought Zach Porthen was exceptional.”
“So the set piece was nice, where we are on the log is nice. I thought our defence was really good. We never let them get on top of us.”
“I felt that we had a strong turn towards the back end of last season and the beginning of this season.
“We weren’t at our clinical best, and we’ve got a huge battle ahead against Benetton. We haven’t won here nor have we played well here before, so we’ve got to lift ourselves for a real big battle in Treviso next week.”