Stormers coach Dobson goes with heart over head with 6/2 bench split for URC final

Stormers coach John Dobson defended his six-two bench split for Saturday's United Rugby Championship final against Munster at the Cape Town Stadium, saying he needed to stay true to the values that brought them far in the tournament.

Instead of having three backs in his eight replacements, Dobson only went for two in scrumhalf Paul de Wet and utility back Clayton Blommetjies.

Preferred utility back Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu was injured last week while flyhalf Jean-Luc du Plessis featured for Western Province against the Lions in a Currie Cup fixture on Friday.

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Dobson said the six-two split has worked well for them and they also needed to reward the players who stayed the course with them this season.

"I'll tell you the truth about the 6/2 split because it came up as an issue this week, but there was a strong case for Jean-Luc and Blommetjies both being included," Dobson said.

"Jean-Luc is a guy who can slot in and do Manie Libbok's job at 10 and Damian Willemse hasn't played much at 10.

"However, one of the values of our team means that I wasn't going to go to Marcel [Theunissen] or Willie [Engelbrecht] and say I'm dropping them for the final.

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"The conversation lasted 30 seconds and while it may have made tactical sense to go 5/3, we've allowed emotion to win and it's the emotion that's got us here.

"It's part of the culture that's got us here and to turn our back on it would've been a problem."

Stormers

15 Damian Willemse, 14 Angelo Davids, 13 Ruhan Nel, 12 Dan du Plessis, 11 Leolin Zas, 10 Manie Libbok, 9 Herschel Jantjies, 8 Evan Roos, 7 Hacjivah