Damian Willemse has high hopes for promising young centre Markus Muller, who is expected to make his debut for the Stormers in the United Rugby Championship (URC) soon.
The Stormers are hosting Glasgow Warriors in a top-of-the-table encounter in Cape Town on Saturday.
With just three rounds of matches left in the URC‘s regular season, the Warriors are currently occupying top position in the standings with 55 points amassed while the Stormers are in joint-second spot with Leinster, four points adrift.
Much has been said and written about Muller, who finished high school last year, and who caught the eye after delivering several dominant performances in schools rugby.
Invited to Springboks alignment camp
The 18-year-old has subsequently made the transition to senior rugby by joining the Stormers and hit the headlines when he was invited to a Springboks alignment camp earlier this year.
Star utility back Willemse believes the promising youngster has the ability to go all the way to the top.
“He’s a fantastic player,” he said. “I rate him very highly and believe he’s going to go far. Not just for the Stormers, but hopefully for the national team as well.
“I can’t wait to see more of him going forward.”
After shining at schoolboy level and also doing well for South Africa’s U20 national team, Muller’s efforts at training for the Stormers have impressed Willemse.
“What you saw at Paarl Gimnasium at school level has been visible in our training sessions over the past few weeks,” said the double Rugby World Cup winner.
“He will learn through experience. I’ll help him where I can. All I’ll say to him is to listen to the coaches and trust his natural instincts and abilities.”
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Over the years, Willemse has shone at full-back, inside centre or fly-half for the Stormers and Springboks but he has been playing on the wing for his club in recent weeks.
The 27-year-old feels his latest positional switch has aided his personal development as a rugby player and helped the Stormers.
“It’s been a very good challenge. It’s been a great addition to the team,” he added. “I felt it helped us a lot with our adaptability to our kicking and how we approach other teams’ kicking games.
“I guess it’s another skill set that I’ve developed over the past few weeks with the coaches’ help. It’s been going well and I’ve been enjoying it.”
Willemse expects another tough challenge from the Warriors who have been victorious in the last five matches between these teams. Despite those losses, he expects this weekend’s match to be a closely fought battle.
‘Both games were really tight’
“Our record (against them) doesn’t show actually how tight those games were. I think both games (last season) were really tight up to the 70th, 75th minute,” he added.
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Willemse highlighted the threats posed by Glasgow but feels it’s important for the Stormers to play to their own strengths.
“They’re an all-court side; they can take it up front with their forwards, they’ve got a great set piece, they’ve got a good kicking game, they’ve got great players in the outside backs… There are multiple threats there,” he explained.
“But we can’t look past what we have. We can focus on the opposition all we want, but if we’re not going to get our stuff right this week, we’re going to struggle.
“It’s probably going to come down to these last 10 minutes, and we need to be ready for that. We need to make sure our game management and our gameplay with both our forwards and backline are spot on.”