Stormers smash Spears

From this report it would seem that next years new team, the Southern Spears, has a long way to improve before justifying taking the place of one of the existing South African franchises.
This follows a significant loss to this years new comers, the Cheetahs, a couple of weeks ago.
I wonder if there is any "out" for the SARU in their course of action as currently it could have disasterous effects on senior SA rugby?

Stormers smash Spears

Saturday January 28 2006

Eleven-try rout in Cape franchise's final warm-up

The Stormers, after a stuttering start, went into overdrive in Wellington on Saturday and smashed the Southern Spears 73-5 in their final Super 14 pre-season encounter.

The Stormers scored 11 tries to the one of the Spears, South Africa's Super 14 team in waiting.

The Spears were forced to play with 14 men for the entire second half, after prop Eugene Maqwelana was red carded.

But if Saturday is a sign of things to come, for the Spears that is, they should be discarded from the Super 14 now.

The Stormers are by no means the most powerful Super 14 teams around and imagine what teams like the Crusaders and Waratahs will do with this bunch of blunt Spears.

For the Stormers it was no more than a contested practice and the fact that they took 20 minutes to put any points on the board suggested they may need another practice match to get rid of all the pre-season rustiness.

The scorers:

For the Stormers:
Tries: Shimange, Watson 2, Skeate, De Villiers, Benjamin 2, Burger, Nokwe 2, Pietersen Cons: Greeff 3, De Kock 6

For the Spears
Try: Wakeling

Yellow cards: JD Moller (Stormers, 33), Ashley Johnson (Spears, 14)
Red card: Eugene Maqwelana (Spears, 33)

The spears have a year to go - *hopefully* they will pick up in the mean time .... hopefully....

It really does shows how damn good the Force are! :approve:

so what will the Spears "nickname" be - I have an idea but some may see that as racist and I will not promote that.