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Stormers replacement scrum half Herschel Jantjies timed his first Super Rugby try to perfection and scored the try that won the Cape Town side a frenetic South African Conference derby against the Lions.
The hosts had not led at any stage of the game, but, by the time the game finished in the 86th minute, Jantjies had given them an epic upset over the Lions – a South African Super Rugby team so dominant over the past five years they have been to the past three finals of the tournament and have lost just once to a domestic team since 2015.
Given that the Stormers had been comprehensively brushed aside by the Bulls 40-3 last weekend, this was a massive result regardless of the fact that it was low quality and that the Lions didn’t fully capitalise on the periods in which they dominated the game.
As one would expect of a team under pressure in the aftermath of laying down against the Bulls last weekend, the Stormers began the game with the requisite desperation in defence against a team that, by the 30th minute, had possession and territory stats of about 75%.
As a result, it was the visitors who looked likeliest to score, and they did in a stop-start first half as the two sides made handling errors.
The first try came as early as the sixth minute through flanker and former Blitzboks player Kwagga Smith, who injected pace into a Lions build-up from close to the try line and showed incredible strength for one so slight by taking Damian Willemse and SP Marais with him over it.
During that early period, the visitors – despite having a lighter pack – were in the ascendancy in the scrums, where the front row of Dylan Smith, Malcolm Marx and freakishly strong tight head Carlu Sadie had the wood on their opponents, be it in the hit or the second shove.
In the line-outs, an area in which the hosts were woefully inept against the Bulls last weekend, Robbie Fleck’s men, led by their go-to man JD Schickerling, had a 100% record in the first half.
But maybe in keeping with the history between Marvin Orie and Schickerling (it was a dangerous tackle by the former when they were younger that nearly ended the latter’s career), the Lions man ran the same scam for the visitors as they went 10 out of 10 in the first half.
With that competitiveness in the set piece, the Lions had to be the dominant side – something they underlined with a try t the end of the first quarter by captain Warren Whiteley, who, incidentally, cried off in the 38th minute due to what seemed to be a shoulder injury.
The number eight scored from the last of a series of pick and drives by the Lions to put them 14-3 up, but the origins of that try bore the hallmarks of a massive failing in terms of discipline by the hosts.
At half-time, the penalty count had the Stormers conceding nine to the Lions’ four, but the wilful nature of said indiscretions was laid bare by prop Alistair Vermaak conceding two penalties for cleaning out from the side. The issue there was that two Stormers penalties had to be overturned to give those penalties, the last resulting in Vermaak being sent to the sin bin on the stroke of half-time.
Yet, for all that dominance, the visitors were going nowhere slowly on the scoreboard thanks to a combination of said handling errors, and possibly due to the fact that their having the lightest loose-trio in the competition meant they couldn’t turn it into go-forward ball.
An example of this is that, at half-time, the two sides had made 53 and 43 carries (Lions and Stormers, respectively), yet it was the hosts who had made 139m on the hoof to the visitors’ 95m.
Ultimately, this meant the Stormers were always going to be in the game, something Marais rammed home by chipping away at the lead with penalties in the second half – it was the visitors’ turn to concede penalties under pressure as their scrums and rucks creaked under the Stormers’ sheer desperation to win.
Then Jantjies struck in the midnight hour of the game.
