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Hurricanes' head coach Colin Cooper was disappointed but philosophical about his team's 13-37 loss to the Stormers at Newlands on Saturday.

Speaking shortly after the match, Cooper said: "We were beaten pretty well but we improved from last week, which is a good sign, but I think momentum was with the Stormers.

"Once you get a momentum it's pretty hard to stop. We had opportunities but we probably didn't grab the opportunities we did [have]."

He added: "The Stormers built a lead on us. We ended up playing catch-up rugby and I think that when you play catch-up rugby in this competition, you're going to struggle to win.

Cooper was full of praise for the home team's performance, saying: "The way the Stormers attacked was quite special."

The Hurricanes' kicking in the game had not been part of the game-plan.

"The Stormers flat-line defence caused us to kick more than we should have. We kicked too much in the first half. We gave the ball away.

"We didn't mean to kick as much as we did. Our game is the ball - to build phases. The Stormers slowed our ball down pretty well so then we became predictable in our attack - so I think we just need to work on our attack."

On the way forward for the Hurricanes, Cooper commented: "We've just got to regroup and find out how good a character we've got."

Asked about the contest up front, Hurricanes' captain Andrew Hore said: "It was the normal old battles. It was pretty tight up front; we came out pretty even. They got their ball and we got our ball."

Hore said he thought "the Stormers played pretty well; the first 40 probably took the game away from us".

He believed that one of the good things about the Super 14 was that teams had to wait only six or seven days before getting "another chance to right the wrongs" and they would endeavour to do so against the Bulls on Friday.

"We've made the tour hard on ourselves with what we did in Bloemfontein and then the first 40 minutes down here," Hore added.

He said that to be semi-final contenders it was important for his team to regroup this week and try to cause an upset against the Bulls in Pretoria.

Cooper said the early diagnosis on fullback Cory Jane's injury was that he was unlikely to be fit for the game at Loftus Versfeld.

By Len Kaplan