There was a bit of rain in Cape Town on Tuesday that shortened the Betway SA20 cricket match between MI Cape Town and Joburg Super Kings but generally the region has sweltered under a hot sun ahead of the DHL Stormers’ departure for their clash with the Harlequins.
The Stormers, who edged home 13-8 in a brutal Vodacom URC derby against the Vodacom Bulls last weekend, are heading to London on Wednesday for Sunday’s third round Pool 3 Investec Champions Cup clash at the Twickenham Stoop. Some of the management members were already talking about how much they were dreading encountering below freezing temperatures, but the arrival of Storm Goretti has added to the challenge that the team faces.
The same holds for the Hollywoodbets Sharks, who are in England for their match against the Sale Sharks on Saturday. When a storm is given a name it means it is serious and reports from the UK have indicated particularly severe conditions with widespread snow, which is the case for much of Europe right now.
Indeed, the Toyota Cheetahs are set to host Ulster in an EPCR Challenge Cup game at their satellite home in Amsterdam on Sunday and they are unsure if the game will even go ahead because of the icy conditions. There has been no talk as yet of the two Champions Cup games being impacted by Storm Goretti, but if anyone was to ask him former Bulls coach Jake White would surely speak of his unhappy memory of his team’s encounter with a storm with a name when they played Saracens in the Champions Cup in London in December 2024.
The Bulls were well beaten and White pointed out to critics at home that they had to be there to properly understand what his team encountered on a night where it wasn’t just Saracens who hit them, but also Storm Amy.
Stormers assistant coach Rito Hlungwani acknowledged before his team’s departure that the conditions will be challenging.
“We have done well in the northern hemisphere this season, and have won five games over there, but that was earlier in the winter, we know it is very different there in January in comparison to October or November,” said Hlungwani.
The challenge of going from summer to winter in the South African case and going from a cold winter to the heat of an African summer is one of the big challenges of the Champions Cup since this country was included in the competition. La Rochelle coach Ronan O’Gara aimed a broadside at the EPCR for allowing it to happen when his team came to South Africa to play the Stormers in Gqeberha in December.
And Sale director of rugby Alex Sanderson made it clear that he saw the Sharks’ switch from humid Durban to the cold of England as a big disadvantage for the visiting team and one that his team would play on in Saturday night’s game.