The Stormers have arrived in Sydney for Sunday's Super 12 clash against the Waratahs with their spirits high despite Saturday's devastating loss against the Cats at Fedsure Newlands.

Coach Alan Solomons said the defeat was no train smash and laid the blame before their own door.

The Stormers are minus injured Springbok centre De Wet Barry, who is replaced by Werner Greeff takes Barry's place.

Exciting Western Province centre Stuart Abbott will probably slot in as Robbie Fleck's midfield partner, provided he has recovered from the calf injury that kept him off the substitutes' bench on Saturday.

Lock Quinton Davids travelled to Sydney after leaving the field after only 15 minutes on Saturday due to an ankle injury. He has an impinged nerve and according to the Stormers medical team it should take a week to heal.

On Saturday, Rob Brink took his place with great success and the former Springbok flank will push strongly for inclusion in the starting line-up in his adopted position.

"We actually lost that game, more than anything else. We have ourselves to blame for losing that game," Solomons lamented after the Cats game. "We just made silly mistakes which cost us. It's a game we could have and should have won. But that's the way it goes and there's nothing we can do."

He didn't want to single out Percy Montgomery's rush of blood at the dead when the Stormers had a lineout throw in a very good attacking position and the fullback decided to try his luck with a quick throw.

"No, it wasn't one individual. If you go through you'll see there'll be a lineout throw, a knock-on, holding the guy in a tackle - there were a number of silly errors that we've made and they cost us at the end of the day.
"If we look at our play today, there was nothing wrong with our lineout. In fact, we stole a lot of their ball. I don't think there was anything wrong with our scrum. We got a critical penalty against us, but that's one of those things.

"The restarts, I thought, were poor. And we've got to work on our kicking game as well. That was the second point. I felt there were some big holes in behind them that we had to exploit. We talked about it but didn't exploit it. We've got to work on our handling of the high ball; we were vulnerable on two, three occasions under the high ball.

"The third thing is that we need to get quicker release of our phase ball. Those are the three areas of concern that came out. I still believe that it could have gone either way. It was won on penalties and it's one of those things. We had two opportunities to score tries at the end of the game and Braam (van Straaten) is a brilliant kicker, but he missed some."

Bob Skinstad was pretty quiet in his first Super 12 game after his injury-enforced layoff of about 14 months, but Solomons was encouraged by his No 8's performance.

"He obviously has some way to go. I told him that he cannot expect to pick up his game where he left off. He did well for his first game up after 12 to 14 months out of the game. We needed fresh legs after Bob has played 60, 65 minutes and he will get better and better as the Super 12 goes on. He needs more game time, but it's positive for him, the team and also for the national team that he came through on Saturday."