John Dobson: This is not the way we wanted to end our URC campaign

An emotional John Dobson, Stormers director of rugby, said this is not the way they envisioned their United Rugby Championship (URC) to end after suffering defeat in the quarter-final of the United Rugby Championship (URC) on Friday night in Scotland.

However, he gave the Glasgow Warriors credit for how they managed to dismantle his side’s defence and kept their potent attack in check with some good, solid defence.

The defending champions, in the end, won comfortably and kept their spotless record at the Scotstoun Stadium against the Cape side in check with a 36-18 victory.

Dobson said it was by far his team’s "worst performance" in a couple of seasons as they exited the tournament at the first knockout stage for the second consecutive season.

“It’s sitting pretty tough in the throat, emotionally,” Dobson said after the match.

“I couldn’t sit in the changeroom and complain about the efforts, though. After their last try, we were all over their 22m area but we just played very very poorly. They put us under a lot of pressure, physically they defended really well. We didn’t get any yardage in our carries.

“I don’t think effort or fight was absent, but a plethora of mistakes (from us), and massive credit to Glasgow for their defence, it was excellent. They are also really good with the ball in hand, as we know, and if we were going to kick as inaccurately as we did, they were going to punish us.”

Dobson added that they were functioning on a 90% lineout success rate for the last couple of games, but it dropped down to 70% on the night. They also defended poorly and gave away in the region of 17 linebreaks and ended the clash with a 65% tackle completion rate.

That all contributed to Glasgow scoring five brilliant tries to take the game away from the visitors, despite the Stormers winning the battle with possession and territory. Apart from the tackling and lineout woes, the exit strategy of the Cape side also put them under immense pressure.

The loss of captain Salmaan Moerat and centre Dan du Plessis in the first half added to their woes, especially on defence.

“It was disruptive,” Dobson said about losing Moerat.

“He was important to what we planned and Dan to keep Sacha (Feinberg-Mngomezulu) at 10. We came here last time and felt hard done by. But it was a really good refereeing performance and a good Glasgow performance. We were well-beaten.

“It was tough to lose Dan, and we had to reshuffle early. I was asked about the risk of a 6-2 bench and the risk of it, and there it was. We had our pants pulled down with Herschel on the wing for 20 minutes.”