Assistant coach Labeeb Levy said the DHL Stormers can ill-afford to give away frivolous penalties if they want to play to their full potential on Saturday.
The Capetonians are looking for a big response against Benetton in Italy this week as they seek a return to winning ways.
John Dobson’s men were unable to overturn a first-half deficit in Glasgow last week and went down 20-9 against the Warriors in what marked their first defeat of the 2023-24 Vodacom URC.
Their situation at the Scotstoun Stadium wasn’t helped by having loose forward Evan Roos and hooker Joseph Dweba sin-binned in quick succession.
Having started their four-match URC tour with a loss, the two-time SA Shield champions will now tackle Benetton, one of only three unbeaten teams after three rounds and coming off a narrow victory over the Lions.
Speaking in a Stormers conference this week, Levy told reporters: “We talk about controllables – if you get blown for an offside penalty, it’s usually one step, so that’s a controllable. If you spear someone, put him down lightly.
“We want to control what we can control. We don’t want to give away unnecessary penalties.
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“We want to get into the areas where we are quite strong, so we can get our players excited to play the brand we want to play.”
Prior to leaving the Republic, the Stormers were two bonus-point wins from two matches, which had them sitting atop the URC table, and Levy expects his charges to bounce back before their much-anticipated grudge match in Limerick against the reigning champions Munster.
He added: “In the game, you go through different types of emotions and then you think certain things were wrong. We had some challenges in the lineout against Glasgow early on, especially when we could have had some good launches and then the scrums were inconsistent from our perspective, but obviously, we had to adapt.
“Against the Scarlets, we had 29 offloads and against Glasgow, we had five. Last week we had around 150 passes and against Glasgow we didn’t even hit the 100 mark, so it wasn’t that type of game.
“Playing on that [4G] pitch brings different challenges, but upon review, from the physicality perspective on defence, the ball carries and pushing each other through contact, those boxes were ticked.
“If we had taken a bit more opportunities it would have been closer and we could have gone for the win, so it was a close game and we were quite happy with the physicality which our boys showed, but there are work-ons which are reflected on the scoreboard.”
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