WHILE SOME OF their supporters agitate over the structural status quo in Irish provincial rugby, the provinces themselves have important business at hand on the pitch in the next few days.
After the excitement and dejection of the Champions Cup and Challenge Cup over the past fortnight, it’s back to the bread and butter of the URC this weekend as the jostling for play-off places intensifies.
Munster and Leinster are in South Africa for their two-game tours, while Ulster and Connacht have home comforts as the league resumes.
With five regular-season rounds to go, Leinster are top of the table, Munster are fourth, Ulster sit eighth, and Connacht are 10th. It promises to be a thrilling run-in, with a few juicy inter-provincial clashes thrown in for good measure.
Leinster are currently five match points ahead of second-placed Glasgow, who still have their own two-game tour of South Africa to come but also play bottom side Zebre twice in their closing five matches. The Bulls are a further four points behind in third but the reality is that Leinster have their destiny in their own hands.
They have yet to officially confirm the squad they’ve brought to South Africa, but some front-liners have been left at home and it seems a few other players have travelled but will return to Dublin after Saturday’s clash with the Lions. That means missing the meeting with the Stormers a week later in order to begin preparing for their Champions Cup semi-final against Northampton on 4 May.
Last season, Leo Cullen’s men beat the Lions but were then shredded by the Bulls the following weekend as the inexperience of a young team showed. Harsh lessons were learned and Leinster hope to perform in both games in South Africa this time around.
With a run of Ospreys [H], Ulster [A], and Connacht [H] still to come after this tour, Leinster will feel they have enough depth and quality to seal top spot ahead of the play-offs, but a bad trip to South Africa could be costly.
While Leinster are juggling double ambitions, the other three provinces are focusing solely on the URC for the rest of the season.
Fourth-placed Munster have a four-point advantage over the next-best Stormers but they should have their sights set on getting into the top two. Glasgow would need to slip up a couple of times but a home quarter-final and possible home semi-final would be huge, even if Graham Rowntree’s men won the title on the road last season.
The immediate problem is that the Bulls, this weekend’s opposition, are already two points ahead in the table and will have that same ambition of chasing a top-two finish.
Saturday evening’s battle at altitude in Pretoria promises to be one of the ties of the weekend. Rowntree was relieved to be able to bring the previously injured or ill RG Snyman, Shane Daly, Calvin Nash, Oli Jager and Fineen Wycherley on tour and while Munster haven’t yet confirmed if they’ll all feature this weekend, even having a couple of them back would a big boost.
All the more so given that Bulls boss Jake White left most of his frontliners at home for last weekend’s visit to Northampton in the Champions Cup quarter-finals. Clearly, the Bulls are taking this URC run-in with the utmost seriousness.
Munster’s key men obviously didn’t play last weekend either but they have had to travel and now they must take down a fresh Bulls team set to feature the likes of Kurt-Lee Arendse, Canan Moodie, Elrigh Louw, Marcell Coetzee and Ruan Nortje. It should be an intriguing battle in the expected heat of nearly 30°C at Loftus Versfeld where the Bulls have given some visiting teams a tough time.
Munster play the Lions next weekend before returning home and facing a final run of Connacht [H], Edinburgh [A], and Ulster [H]. They need all hands on deck, fit and firing, if they’re to repeat last season’s remarkable end-of-season feats.
Ulster have a chance to rebound from a Challenge Cup trouncing at the hands of Clermont as they welcome Cardiff to Belfast this Friday night.
Their task has been made trickier by losing captain Iain Henderson, Rob Herring, Steven Kitshoff, Nick Timoney, and Stewart Moore to injuries suffered in France last weekend. They’ll also be wary of a Cardiff team who showed again in Munster recently that they can be hard to put away.
The table is heavily bunched around eighth-placed Ulster, with the three teams directly beneath Richie Murphy’s side only a single match point behind them. The Ulstermen will be thinking more positively about the Ospreys and Benetton being only just ahead, but these are going to be important weeks for the province.
Amid some big changes, qualifying for the Champions Cup by finishing in the top eight is crucial ahead of next season, while also obviously giving the northern province a shot at the play-offs. Murphy will hope a convincing run-in can help him land the job permanently.
Following the Cardiff clash, Ulster will take on Benetton [H], Scarlets [A], Leinster [H], and Munster [A].
Connacht are one of the three teams who sit just one match point off the top eight so there’s still a huge amount to play for despite their own disappointment in the Challenge Cup against Benetton last weekend.
It seems pivotal that Pete Wilkins’ side get as close to maximum return from their next two games as possible. They host Zebre in Galway on Saturday evening, then travel to the Dragons next weekend.
After that, their run-in of Munster [A], Stormers [H], and Leinster [A] looks tough, so having points in the bank could be key. Much like Ulster, there is a fair degree of change likely to take place in Connacht this summer so securing that big goal of Champions Cup qualification is vital.
And as Connacht showed last season by winning their quarter-final away to Ulster, there’s scope for a thrill in the play-offs. They went on to be beaten by the Stormers in the semis, but that knock-out win in Belfast was a high point in the campaign.
Play-off rugby is where all four of the provinces aspire to be. Better yet if you can finish in the top four for a home quarter-final or the top two to grab a possible home semi-final. The race is on.
