The URC is back for 2 rounds between the Champions Cup pool stage and the start of the Six Nations. With top sides dropping points and the chasing pack having games in hand, the table now makes for fascinating reading. Is this the most open URC to date? Let’s talk about it…
Murray (9'), MacLeod (32'), Mee (83')
Tries
Stewart (18'), Ward (26'), Wilson (67')
Costelow (10', 32', 84')
Conversions
Doak (26', 67')
Costelow (5', 70')
Penalties
Doak (75')
The URC is back for 2 rounds between the Champions Cup pool stage and the start of the Six Nations. With top sides dropping points and the chasing pack having games in hand, the table now makes for fascinating reading. Is this the most open URC to date? Let’s talk about it…
Scarlets fans said they wanted change. They said the talent was there but the players were being held back, and the team needed to get back what it did best and play with speed and risk. They were right, and how!
Firstly, this was an engrossing game. Ulster sent a full team to Llanelli and they played well for most of the 80 minutes. The strong wind made fools of both sides at times, but neither played badly. Had a couple of small moments, a couple of 50/50 referee calls gone another way, Ulster could have won this match by 2 scores.
Scarlets fans won’t care, though. The delirium in the 84th minute as a majestic Sam Costelow pass fizzed across the Ulster defence to send Ellis Mee galloping clear was unbridled. Supporters were still being watching it back on loop well into Monday afternoon. What made it sweeter, though, was that it was the perfect end to a dogged, backs to the ball performance where the West Wallians played easily their best rugby of the season so far.
Official player of the match was bordering on speechless as he gave his full time interview, bewildered at how the Ulstermen had managed to let the game slip. PremierSport anchor Ross Harries, a Scarlets fan himself, struggled to maintain his stoic professionalism as he interviewed DoR Nigel Davies. Feelings like this make you forget the hard times, erase the pain, and remind you why you’re even here in the first place. This is what sport is all about!
The Stormers were 8 from 8 and flying high coming into this game. A thrashing at the hands of Harlequins had been put down to sending a rotated squad up north and the big guns were brought back to welcome rivals the Sharks to a packed-out DHL Stadium. Events like this truly show the URC in its best light.
Unfortunately, the men from Durban had not read the script. The Sharks led this match for 79 minutes and showed magnificent tenacity and dedication to inflict the league leaders their first defeat of the URC season. It was a win founded on physicality and bravery at the set piece. The Sharks scrum stood up to a Stormers 8 that has been wreaking havoc on the URC to date and, most crucially, their line out contested brilliantly in the air to stop attacks at source.
With the Stormers losing their ability to set up driving mauls, their most potent try-scoring weapon, their attack floundered. All season their attack has underperformed in open play and these struggles struck agin – just a 1.7 conversion rate from their 11 22m entries. Sacha and Willemse, their two brightest sparks, were only able to conjure 1 off the cuff try via improvisation. Remarkably for the Stormers, their sole loss of the URC so far has cost them top spot, emphasising how they have not been registering enough try bonus points to fortify their winning form.
The noises coming from the Sharks camp had indicated they were targeting these 2 games – a mini test series – but having succeeded in leg 1 they now face a backlash in leg 2… We cannot wait!
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Is that the undertaker music playing? No, it’s Leinster winning their 10th match in a row. This is not a side playing its best rugby, but it is a side winning a lot of games. Their 3rd loss of the first 4 games to Munster at Croke Park is feeling a long time ago now, and the rest of the league is worried.
Like many of Leinster’s recent games, it started inauspiciously. The men from Dublin haven’t been more than a score points ahead at half time in any of their last 7 games and have been behind at the break in 3 of them. However, the aggregate 2nd half score of those 7 games is 126-41 in their favour, having conceded just 4 second half tries in that time. It took until the final quarter to put Connacht away, but it still felt inevitable.
Leinster have often been mocked for peaking at the wrong time, so seeing them build slowly as the season goes on is very ominous. As for Connacht, their season simply refuses to get going. 2 wins from 9 plus two walkovers against whipping boys in the Challenge Cup is not what Galway folk expected to see when Stuart Lancaster was announced. Their new grandstand looks stunning, but the team on the pitch is struggling to live up to it.
Speaking of peaking at the wrong time, Munster fans must be wondering where the team they watched win 5 opening games on the bounce has gone. Their win over the Dragons put a stop to the rot of losing 4 games on the bounce, but it was hardly in reassuring fashion.
In the first half, fans watched in amazement as the Dragons, for so long the whipping boys of the URC, genuinely outplayed Munster on their own patch. The Newport region have a renewed confidence in this block of games and their on-field combinations are really starting to fire. A half time scoreline of 13-7 to the visitors had the Munstermen shooting each other some very uncomfortable looks indeed, which only got worse when the Dragons extended their lead mid way through the 3rd quarter.
To be fair, Munster did rally and came away with the win. It wasn’t pretty – 0 line breaks at home to a Welsh side whilst conceding 5 is a deeply troubling statistic and suggests some real regression – but come the end of the season they will look back on this one as ‘job done, move on’. The trip to Glasgow next needs to be their sole focus. They’re still in touch in the race for a home play-off for now, but they can’t afford to drop many more points.
Having domestic league rugby back, not just the URC but the TOP 14 too, has hammered home just how much of an unwanted distraction Europe has become. Yes, there are great days out for fans, but the narratives and the jeopardy are so much greater in the leagues.
The Stormers brushed off their away lost to Harlequins in the cup, but the home loss to the Sharks in front of 52,000 fans has been like a dagger to their hearts. Leinster slowly creeping their way up the table is creating a greater sense of foreboding than their 4/4 record in the pool stages. Ulster dropping points away to the Scarlets has generated more online chatter than any of their Challenge Cup games so far.
Just imagine if we were able to focus on domestic rugby properly, without interruption – like the Southern Hemisphere fans get to with Super Rugby. The products would be so much stronger for it. Time for the game to consider what fans really want.
