Despite the comprehensive 05-35 loss at the hands of Ulster RFC in round 13 of the United Rugby Championship, DHL Stormers head coach Dobson was pleased to test his depth in key positions.
“At the start of the season, we thought that this was going to be a very hard game, given our history. We were probably going to send a weakened team."
“But I must say I thought we had enough depth to do better than we did. I thought we could have done something special. But I can’t blame the disruptions, Ulster were good."
“I thought Sazi Sandi brought a lot of energy, I think Brok is playing good rugby. Andre-Hugo Venter also brought energy and we can see the quality of Ruben van Heerden.
“And probably the guy who gave me the most excitement was Marcel Theunissen at No.6, he hasn’t played much rugby."
“There were some nice young forwards and by the end, you wouldn’t say it’s a traditional Stormers pack, but they were knocking on Ulster’s door a few times. That is probably the one positive."
Dobson, however, was not impressed by the performance of the backline. “Not so many positives in the backs I must say. It was too disruptive," Dobson said.
“I don’t know what it looked like on tv, but it was almost like we were playing with one-off runners. We didn’t have any depth to our attack,”
“We just didn’t have any depth or variety on the attack. If Manie and Dan Du Plessis had been at No.10 and No.12 it would have probably been a slightly different picture."
“We made some defensive errors as well. They caught us a little bit with the moves from the line-out. Our backfield was poor when they kicked into space, but they were very good on defence."
