ROUND 2 OF the United Rugby Championship brings the South African franchises into play for the first time this season.
The Lions, smarting from their Currie Cup final defeat last week, host Ulster later this morning in Johannesburg (11:55pm), while last season’s URC finalists the Bulls welcome Edinburgh to Pretoria (2pm).
The Stormers and Sharks, meanwhile, are up north, opening away to the Ospreys and Connacht respectively (both 7:35pm).
It’s the latter South African club about whom the most pressing question can be asked before a ball is kicked: now four seasons into the URC, are the Sharks serious people?
While the Stormers and Bulls have consistently reached league finals and the Lions have built upwards from a lower base, the Sharks’ reputation has oscillated between that of a sleeping giant and a clown act. The Durbanites have routinely flattered to deceive despite boasting considerably more talent on paper than several of the sides who have finished ahead of them.
They are effectively Manchester United: big news and fundamentally bad. And much like United, they would appear to be little more than a ‘cup team’, sealing Champions Cup qualification last season only by dint of winning the Challenge Cup having missed out on a top-eight finish.
There is a taste of more off silverware, however, and the Sharks head for Galway today not only buoyed by last season’s trophy finish but on the back of a dramatic Currie Cup final success over the Lions last Saturday.
A 59-metre penalty at Ellis Park from new signing Jordan Hendrikse, who knew the terrain well as a former Lion, bolstered the 23-year-old’s case for Springbok involvement and condemned his previous employers to heartbreak.
Most impressive about victory for John Plumtree’s Sharks, however, was that they had to go to a guttural place in order to achieve it. The weather in Johannesburg was pestilential to the extent that the sides were scoreless at half-time. This final was a stark juxtaposition to the 63-point humdinger with Clermont at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in May, but the Sharks bit harder than the cold and won the kind of game in which they would have wilted before Plumtree’s arrival.
An immediate trip to the west of Ireland — and on a week surely shortened, slightly, by Currie Cup celebrations — is an immediate test of the Sharks’ credentials. They lost five of their six URC games in the northern hemisphere last season on their way to a pathetic 14th-placed finish in the league table.
If they can add grit to a league-leading lineout (almost 90% success rate last term) and powerful scrum (91.1%; 21 penalties won and six lost), they’ll prove a far more serious proposition in 2024/25.
They’ve added physical heft not only in the form of back-five forwards such as returning Springbok captain Siya Kolisi and ex-Leinster lock Jason Jenkins, but in the big boot of Hendrikse which should allow them to capitalise on scrum dominance from anywhere outside their own 10-metre line.
They’re currently sixth-favourites to win a first URC title behind Leinster, the Bulls, Munster, Glasgow and the Stormers in that order. For context, however, they’re only fractionally more favoured than Richie Murphy’s young Ulster side who don’t have realistic title aspirations this time around.
Still, the Sharks will surely bring to the equation some on-field substance to complement their commercial potential and prove themselves serious people, at last.
Jake White’s Bulls, meanwhile, have a different kind of monkey on their back.
The Pretoria side effectively won the lottery when Glasgow took Munster out at the semi-final stage last season, a result which brought the showpiece to Loftus Versfeld.
Glasgow, however, then pulled a Munster and completed their road run with a title success in South Africa, stunning a Bulls side who had beaten Leinster to seemingly put one hand on the trophy.
Jarringly for the Bulls, it made for a third defeat in a row in finals, having previously lost the Rainbow Cup to Benetton and the inaugural URC decider to the Stormers. White’s side were favourites in all three games.
Whether or not it happens this season, the suspicion is that the Bulls will buck that trend before it becomes some kind of hoodoo. They’ve endured relatively little turnover of personnel in the off-season and the ingredients are there for them to make it back to the big show again.
The Bulls scored more tries than any other side last season with 93. They had the second best lineout in the competition after the Sharks. They won 31 scrum penalties to eight lost with a 91% success rate on their own ball. And they ranked third for turnovers won.
The addition of lock Cobus Weise from Sale Sharks, and the ascendancy of his soon-to-be second-row partner Ruan Nortje to the Springbok ranks, are further cause for the Pretorians to be excited as they welcome Edinburgh for their season opener.
Down on the Western Cape, the Stormers will come in slightly under the radar this season after a relatively low-profile finish to their 2023/24 efforts.
Up until last season, John Dobson’s side had played six consecutive URC play-off games at home, winning the title in 2022 and falling to Munster at the final hurdle of their defence a year later.
As such, they found themselves in unchartered territory when they had to visit Glasgow for a knockout game back in June.
That they came unstuck was no surprise — Glasgow, eventual champions, are clearly an excellent side — but the URC campaign overall marked a regression for the Stormers who put more stock in the Champions Cup than their South African peers.
That the former champions are only fifth favourites to win the league this time around feels about right: though the Stormers remain electrifying on their day, they are a side riddled with inconsistencies within their game.
They won more scrum penalties than any other side last season with 48 — a stat which should only be helped by the re-signing of Springbok Steven Kitschoff from Ulster — but their overall scrum success rate was just under 83%.
They have a finely tuned territorial kicking game — the Stormers regained more of their own kicks than anyone else in ’24/25 — and yet Mannie Libbok and replacements were just 72% off the tee.
And for all that we associate them with care-free, pillar-to-post rugby, Dobson’s side conceded the third fewest tries of any side in 2023/24. Incidentally, their defence coach Norman Laker was reportedly on Steve Borthwick’s shortlist to replace Felix Jones before England instead recruited Joe El-Abd from Oyonnax.
As it proved last year, it will be a tough ask to book a top-four finish with Leinster, Munster, the Bulls and champions Glasgow all looking either stronger or, at worst, no weaker than they were last term. And the Stormers probably need a home play-off run more than most if they are to book a third URC final next summer.
The Lions’ primary aim, meanwhile, will be to simply make the play-offs after last season’s agonisingly near miss.
The Ospreys pipped the Johannesburg outfit to eighth place on a games-won tiebreak, cutting short what had been a brilliant surge by the Lions who have rapidly progressed under Ivan van Rooyen.
That the Lions ranked fifth for both tries scored (67) and tries conceded (51) epitomised the entertainment value for which they became everybody’s second- or third-favourite team, but underpinning their growth is a weapon with which they have only more recently become associated.
Their scrum was the best in the league last season: they won 24 scrum pens and conceded just three across their 18 games, leading the way with a success rate of almost 95%.
Their lineout (88.3%) was a more than solid launchpad and they also had the best collision dominance (57.6%) of any of the South African franchises.
Their first step towards a top-eight finish this season will be to win more derby games and pinch a couple more games up north to complement their strong home record at Ellis Park.
But smarting from their Currie Cup heartbreak last Saturday, the Lions will first seek to hunt down an ebullient Ulster side who will be one of several play-off rivals in 2024/25.
