With Leolin Zas grounded, Suleiman Hartzenberg and Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu are vying to take off in the crucial Champions Cup clash against London Irish on Sunday. DYLAN JACK reports.
Stormers assistant coach Rito Hlungwani confirmed that Zas picked up a minor gluteal muscle tear in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship loss to Glasgow Warriors and has returned to Cape Town as a result.
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It means that the Stormers will be without last season’s top try scorer when they take on London Irish in the third round of the Champions Cup.
“Zas has flown back home because of his injury,” Hlungwani confirmed on Wednesday. “It is a tough loss but we have to carry on.
“Luckily, we do have good enough cover. Suleiman has played in that position before and is here with us. It’s not the end of the world.
“Stefan Ungerer and Sacha have been training well. Those two guys have come back from injury.
“We have enough numbers to cover. There’s plenty of variations for us. Sacha can play at 12, so we could maybe move Damian [Willemse] to fullback and Blomme [Clayton Blommetjies] to the wing. We are happy with where we are, even though it’s sad that Zas can’t play this game.”
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Hlungwani said that even though the Stormers are disappointed with the last-minute loss in Glasgow, morale is still high and the focus remains on boosting their Champions Cup playoff hopes in London.
“We didn’t spend much time analysing that last try. We felt there were a lot of little errors that we made in the game. We had a lot of opportunities to score more points and to win the game.
“There were a lot of things that were in our control. Our mindset has always been to improve and get better. If we improve those little things, we won’t find ourselves in that same situation.
“Yes, this is a bit of a character test for us. At the same time, we feel strongly that we had a lot of opportunities that we missed out on.”
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