A disappointed Stormers head coach John Dobson questioned his team’s decision-making after they suffered their 24-31 defeat to Cardiff in a row in this season’s United Rugby Championship.
“Cardiff played with real fight and zip. They are busy with a rebuild and we saw some of ourselves in them, but we were extremely poor,” Dobson told reporters after the match. “We were absolutely dominant with a certain style of play and we were 14-0 up."
“I might be one out, but to get seven scrum put-ins in the second half just for us to lose the ball in contact is not good enough at the URC level."
“It’s a very disappointing way to finish the tour. It’s a disappointing tour.”
“I didn’t expect us to play like that. It was by far our worst performance on tour, which is disappointing.” Dobson said.
“I don’t know why we needed to do that. Just take the ball through the phases and eventually, they will crack and we will get a penalty and we go into the corner and have a go," Dobson criticized his team's lack of patience on the attack.
“But we seem to just want to make hail marys all the time and it is a really poor performance by us in that respect.”
Dobson also questioned his team’s commitment to sticking to the game plan: "That’s probably another element to it and probably the piece that is missing. I suppose certain guys need to smarten up some elements of their game."
“As a collective, we haven’t done ourselves any favours on tour. I don’t think the competition thinks more of us. I don’t think some of the players or staff feel good about themselves."
