Rúaidhrí O'Connor

Yeah, I went down to interview Clayton McMillan the week of the Stormers game just on the back of the November Internationals and found him to be an incredibly impressive person, really enjoyed interviewing him.

And that Saturday they went out and they blitzed the Stormers in the first half of a really important top of the table URC game.

And at halftime were I think 21, 21 something up, but they were on course for a bonus point win that would put them clear in the URC after six games unbeaten.

And then the Stormers come out.

John Dobson brought on a 6-2 bench and went full bomb squad.

And the Stormers destroyed their scrum, destroyed their mall, and won the game.

And they haven't recovered.

They've been terrible ever since, really.

Barring a bit of a flurry against Leinster, a flurry in Toulon, when their backs are against the wall.

And that five-game winning start, which included that brilliant win in Croke Park...

Which Macmillan, in fairness, was saying at the time, we can't get carried away with our start.

It's faded into memory and it's become their worst season in quite some time.

It's quite shocking and Macmillan looks stunned in the coaching box repeatedly over the last couple of weeks.

I remember in Bath, he sat, after the full-time whistle went, he sat for a while as the other coaches kind of tidied up and left and went down to the dressing room to just...

gather his thoughts because that bath game was such a shock to the system that came a week after that stormers game they those double body blows just seem to have just kind of knocked them almost knocked them out and they found themselves in this bit of a doom spiral they obviously played their part in a really good game on saturday evening um and there were some great individual performances but

They were left a bit... I don't know, did they underestimate Kass?

Because Kass has such a history in this tournament of being no-shows in games like this.

But that's not reading their recent history.

They got to knockouts last year and gave it a good go.

So it's a really damaging start to his tenure.