Sunwolves coach Filo Tiatia has reacted to last week's mauling by the Lions by making nine changes to his starting XV for this weekend's Super Rugby game with the Stormers in Cape Town.

"We were not happy about our performance and a lot of things were not the way we want to represent ourselves as players and management," Tiatia said Friday of last week's 94-7 defeat.

"We started the season against the Hurricanes where they scored a lot of points against us but we showed a lot of character and heart. We know that we can compete against some of the best teams in the world so we just have to be consistent about how we play and represent the Sunwolves jersey. We want to bounce back and earn some respect."

Much of that lost respect came with the Sunwolves missing 59 tackles, and game captain Willie Britz -- one of the six players to keep his place -- said the team had worked hard in the week to rectify the problems.

"Last week was a really bad game for us but that is not a reflection of how the season went," the Cape Town native said. "The boys know what to do and we have worked really hard mentally and physically just to get everything right and get the processes right to make a better performance."

With Sam Wykes forced to return home as the result of injury, Britz and lock Kotaro Yatabe are the only forwards to keep their place.

Koki Yamamoto, Takeshi Hino and Takuma Asahara form an all-new front row, Uwe Helu joins Yatabe in the second row and Malgene Ilaua and Shuhei Matsuhashi line up in the back row with the captain.

There is a little more continuity in the backs with scrumhalf Keisuke Uchida, centers Derek Carpenter and Ryohei Yamanaka and wing Teruya Goto all playing their second game in as many weeks.

Yu Tamura has recovered from the knock he picked up in the second test against Ireland and is named at 10, Kotaro Matsushima will play on the right wing and Riaan Viljoen starts at fullback.

On the bench, Atsushi Sakate, Masataka Mikami and Koo Ji Won provide the front-row cover. Yoshitaka Tokunaga and Shokei Kin are the other replacement forwards with Kaito Shigeno, Rikiya Matsuda and Jumpei Ogura the reserve backs.

The two sides met in Singapore in March with the Springbok-laden Stormers -- who have already clinched the Africa 1 conference and a home quarterfinal in the playoffs -- coming from 11 points down to win 44-31.

"We are more concerned around our performance than worrying about the Stormers because we've got a lot of stuff we have to do in all facets of our play so we are really trying to concentrate on that," said Tiatia. "We just have to be better."