Paul de Villiers ‘comfortable’ leading young Stormers team

Rising Springbok and Stormers star Paul de Villiers is enjoying the extra responsibility after being handed the team’s captaincy reins, and is looking forward to leading a young team in their United Rugby Championship (URC) match against Scarlets at the Cape Town Stadium on Saturday (kick-off 4pm).

De Villiers was unexpectedly thrown into the deep end last weekend, when he received the captaincy at short notice after regular skipper Ruhan Nel picked up a calf injury in training and was a late withdrawal from the team that went on to beat Bristol Bears in their Champions Cup opener.

But De Villiers acquitted himself well in tricky circumstances against Bristol, having to navigate 30 minutes with players down after a red and yellow card, and he has been rewarded by being given another chance to prove his worth by leading the side, with Nel being rested as a precaution.

Top form

De Villiers, who has been in top form for both the Boks and Stormers over the past few months, said he wanted to make sure the captaincy didn’t impact his game, while he was also comfortable with the other leaders around him in the side.

“I will try to make this captaincy role not influence my own game. That is important to me,” said De Villiers in the lead up to the match.

“I just want to be comfortable in that position with the group and team and gel with them. I feel we did pretty well collectively last weekend, especially with our discipline and the way we reacted to messages from the coaching staff at half-time.

“Hopefully on Saturday we can do that from the first whistle and respond to the plans and what we want to do. I am quite excited to see how that plays out. We are so spoiled with leaders around me and that makes the job easier, especially last weekend against Bristol.”

Emerging stars

The Stormers have named a large number of emerging stars in the squad for the match, including four former Junior Springbok captains in the starting 15.

De Villiers led them in 2023, star flyhalf Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu was captain in 2022, prop Zach Porthen led the way in 2024 and lock Riley Norton captained them to the Junior World title in Italy last year.

Other exciting youngsters in the group include centre Markus Muller (19) and scrumhalf Haashim Pead (21), both starting, and utility back Yaqeen Ahmed (20) and prop Olly Reid (20), both on the bench.

“It is a bit of a different challenge this week, with some new guys in the team and it being a bit of a younger team I think, with less caps and less experience. But I am excited to see what we can do as a team,” said De Villiers.

“We also have got a massive bench and good leaders to help if things get tough (in the second half) and we need to make plans. But I am quite confident in this team and looking forward to showing what we can do.”