Norton debuts as Zas reaches his Stormers century of caps

The successful Junior Springbok captain Riley Norton is among four debutants in the DHL Stormers match 23 for Friday night’s opening Vodacom United Rugby Championship clash with Connacht in Galway that will also bring up wing Leolin Zas’s hundredth cap.

If you consider that the Stormers had mentioned earlier in the week that a combination of Springbok commitments and injuries had left them “a little skinny”, which were the words of attack coach Dawie Snyman, the team that has been called up for the opening match of the URC campaign is a strong one. It also gives some indication of the thinking of director of rugby John Dobson when it comes to some of the conundrums he faces going into the new season.

One of those is the question mark over lock, where the loss to French clubs of two Bok second row forwards Salmaan Moerat (La Rochelle) and Ruben van Heerden (Montpellier) has posed the one potential negative counterpoint to what otherwise was a strong off-season when it came to acquisitions.

Cheslin Kolbe, Siya Kolisi, Wilco Louw and Haashim Pead, none of who will be involved on Friday night, are the incoming players, but last year the Stormers were able to field four quality locks in their 23 and it worked for them. Dobson has responded by mixing up the two players who would ostensibly be his top locks this season, JD Schickerling and Adre Smith, between the starting team and the bench.

Schickerling will start alongside Norton, who made his senior Bok debut in the non test-cap international against the Barbarians in June, while Smith will play off the bench. Connor Evans, who was good against both Leinster in the URC semi-final in Dublin and in the match against the All Blacks that started the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry tour, will join Smith on a bench that features a six/two split between forwards and backs.

Considering how many players are missing, it is a strong bench, with plenty of experience in the complement of forwards. It is when it comes to the backline players that is less the case, but both scrumhalf Ezekiel Ngobeni and the highly promising Junior Bok flyhalf Yaqeen Ahmed have an abundance of ability and potential.

With Pead only this week having moved back to Cape Town from the 10Bet Lions and Cobus Reinach with the Boks in Perth for Sunday’s one-off test match against Australia, the man on loan from the Seattle Seawolves, former Lions scrumhalf Andre Warner, gets his debut opportunity in Galway.

The other Stormers debutant is hooker Vernon Paulo, who has played for the Cheetahs and the Stormers XXIII in the Currie Cup but will be playing his first game for the Stormers senior team off the bench as backup to Andre-Hugo Venter. Evan Roos, normally a No8, will fill the openside flank void created by the Bok commitments for Paul de Villiers and Deon Fourie, with Hacjivah Dayimani bringing his pace off the back of the scrum and Louw Nel as the other loose-forward.

Junior Bok loosehead Olly Reid plays off the bench, as he did this time last year, when the Stormers opened their 2025/2026 campaign with a good win over Leinster in Cape Town.

Zas plays his landmark 100th game as part of a back three that features fellow experienced players in Warrick Gelant and Seabelo Senatla.

DHL Stormers team: Warrick Gelant, Seabelo Sentala, Ruhan Nel (captain), Jonathan Roche, Leolin Zas, Jurie Matthee, Andre Warner, Hacjivah Dayimani, Louw Nel, Evan Roos, JD Schickerling, Riley Norton, Neethling Fouche, Andre-Hugo Venter, Vernon Matongo. Replacements: Vernon Paulo, Olly Reid, Sazi Sandi, Connor Evans, Adre Smith, Marcel Theunissen, Ezekiel Ngobeni, Yaqeen Ahmed.