Paris-born, English referee Christophe Ridley appeared to award several 50-50 calls to the home side in the dying minutes to deny the visitors a win, even when he appeared unsighted himself.
The Stormers were desperately unlucky not to get a penalty-try for a deliberate collapsing of the maul which did result in a yellow card, and then were twice denied tries by the Television Match Official when Ridley gave an on-field decision of “no try”.
“We expected a strong set piece and we actually handled them really well,” Stormers flyhalf Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu said. “I think we were very unlucky at the end. I think we could have got more reward out of the maul.
“We did everything we needed to do. I don’t want to make any comments on what I saw but I think we could have been a lot more fortunate with some of the calls towards the end.
“At the one maul, I remember JD’s (Schickerling) feet in the air when he was trying to get the ball back to the back of the maul. It was pretty tough.”
Despite not getting the rub of the green, Feinberg-Mngomezulu praised the performance of the team, which should set them up well for the run-in to the United Rugby Championship season.
“Physically we got a lot of unforced errors out of them, we did well in the kicking game and any scraps there were on the floor,” he said. “I think we can be very proud of our performance, obviously not the result we wanted, but we’re not going to go (home) with our heads down.”
Feinberg-Mngomezulu’s Springbok teammate Cobus Reinach also felt the Stormers were unfortunate.
“We came here to win and do a job and we fell a bit short,” he said. “We said afterwards that we can be proud of ourselves. We went guns (blazing), it was just a decision here and there that probably didn’t go our way but that’s rugby.”
The Stormers are next in action on April 18 when they host Connacht in the URC. They are in second place in the table after 14 rounds.
