Western Forces vs. Stormers: A look at the team changes
Mid February to Early April is the growing time for the March lily in the Cape Town with a variable weather as the summer slowly enters into the autumn.
With the weather ranging from warm to hot, the on field temperature for the upcoming Stormers vs. Western Forces will surely raise the mercury during the game.
The Stormers will start as the favourites with leading their conference and combined standings. Both teams have made changes for their coming Saturday encounter.
Richard Graham, the Western Force coach has prefer to stick with same team that helped them to secure their first win of the season last week by defeating the lions 27 to 15 as they better their un beaten record at the Coca Cola park.
In their last match against the Lions, Western Force has brought back the veteran Tim Fairbrother in place of Matt Dunning who suffered an ankle injury in their game against Cheetahs.
Before travelling to Cape Town Western force already had a good competitive training in Johannesburg followed by sessions at Cape Town.
With Nathan Sharpe in the Locks, the defence should be lively and the Super XV leaders Stormers will be looking forward to tackle the challenge Sharpe poses. Sharpe will be appearing for the record 137th time in Super Rugby history.
While Stormers will be focusing to penetrate the Force’s defence, Forces need to perform exceptionally to score to put some sort of impression on the Stormers and do well to their overall chances to progress further. Particularly the expectation from James
O Connor will be high who also leads the Backline and has already been singled out by the Stormers Captain De Villiers.
Stormers who are currently unbeaten in 2011 Super Rugby season on back of probably the best defence in Super XV would like to earn few bonus points to extend their lead further over the other teams.
The contest would be very entertaining as a loss this week for Stormers and a victory by the Crusaders in London would result in Stormers descending from the top position. Stormers have again ringing few changes as Rynhardt Elstadt being ruled out of the
game due to ankle strain which is termed as not of serious nature and is expected to be available for next week game.
Meanwhile he has been replaced by De Kock Steenkamp. For a time at a lower level rugby game, Gary Van Aswegen drops and is being replaced on the bench by Lionel Cronje alongside Siyabonga Ntubeni and Anton Van Zyl.
In their last match against Bulls, Stormers then also made three changes and seems to be the trend with them in order to have the players available to replace a starting line player in case of injury and compromising less on their winning streak.
Talking of injuries, the good news for Stormers is of Schalk Burger who have participated a hard training session and is eyeing the match against the Sharks.
Burger earlier had sustained a knee injury in their match against the Loins that allowed Jean De Villiers to show his leadership skills and take his team to victory against the defending champions Bulls last week.
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