The Dragons fell to their 16th successive defeat in the BKT United Rugby Championship as they were beaten 48-12 by the Stormers in Cape Town.
Filo Tiatia’s side battled long and hard and were only trailing 14-0 at the break and 29-12 at the 70-minute mark. But then a late flurry of tries from the Stormers carried them to a bonus-point win that guaranteed them a top four finish and a home quarter final.
As for the Dragons, who were missing 18 players when Wales prop Rhodri Jones pulled out before kick-off, the defeat condemned them to their worst season on record with a game left to play with only one win and nine points.
Aaron Wainwright and Dane Blacker grabbed tries for the ‘Men of Gwent’, while the Stormers scored seven. Centre Wandisile Simelane got two of them, the first after only two minutes, and the others came from Seabelo Senatla, Stefan Ungerer, Damian Willemse, Suleiman Hartzenberg and Paul de Wet.
Tiatia’s side complete their season in Pretoria in Round 18 with an even tougher test s against the Bulls, who are currently second in the table behind Leinster. They beat Cardiff at Loftus Versfeld in Round 17.
“We have one game to focus on and the group we have will keep working hard. You can see we need to keep working on our set piece, our transitional work when we turn ball over,” said Tiatia.
“They scored three tries from that and a lot of our young guys have got to keep learning. I’m excited about the DNA of the group, and the DNA of a Gwent man is evident with a lot of our young guys.
“We had some unfortunate injuries during the game so we had to find solutions around who would come on. We took off our captain, Ben Carter, just to make sure we have some legs for next week when we play a very good Bulls team.
“There are a lot of young guys in our group who came on and I was happy around some of their performances. It kept us in the game.
“We have a lot of young guys getting opportunities who are not quite ready yet, but that is where we are at, and they can keep growing.”