Hurricanes blast Stormers

The Stormers Super 14 campaign was effectively ended on Saturday with a lacklustre 34-11 defeat to the Hurricanes in Wellington.

Ma'a Nonu scored twice fly-half and Willie Ripia kept a perfect kicking record to all but mathematically rule the Cape Town franchise out of semi-final contention.

The failings on attack continued to haunt the South Africans and, bar one freak break out try, there was barely anything in the way of danger from the visitors.

The Stormers did score first though, when Dylan des Fountain - on for Jean de Villiers, whose knee lasted precisely three minutes - latched on to a loose ball, although Peter Grant missed with what should have been an easy conversion.

Willie Ripia landed a penalty in reply and then David Smith broke before offloading to Alby Mathewson who found Jeremy Thrush to complete a terrific try for the hosts.

It got worse for the Stormers. Grant missed a shocker from the tee, then Sireli Naqelevuki conceded a scrum through his poor effort to field a kick through from David Smith

Killer blow

Smith was hauled down short from the resulting set piece, then back it went right to Tamati Ellison for the second try, excellently converted by Ripia to make it 17-5.

There was a brief flicker of resistance from the visitors, the Stormers forwards marching 14 phases to force a penalty in the Hurricanes 22 and Grant narrowed the deficit to 17-8 going into the break.

Ripia and Grant exchanged further kicks at the start of the second half before the hosts struck the killer blow when Cory Jane latched onto a clever kick over the Hurricanes backs from Grant.

Jane stepped his way through the fragmented Stormers and offloaded to Nonu for the score. Ripia made it 27-11 after 53 minutes.

He made it 34-11 after 63 minutes once Nonu had barged his way over for the bonus-point try. The Hurricanes were cruising by now having racked up all 34 points without ever truly hitting top gear.

By contrast, the introduction of Willem de Waal did nothing to ignite the Stormers backs.

Wylie Human made a break with eight minutes to go, then looped a scoring pass over, but Naqelevuki spilled it and the game closed out with the scores unchanged.