URC WRAP: SA teams struggle with away starts

The second round of the Vodacom United Rugby Championship produced one freaky result but for the South African teams that were starting out their campaigns, what transpired was pretty predictable, with the away teams losing and the home teams winning.

Let’s start with that freaky result. Munster, the champions going into last season and the log winners in 2023/24, were beaten by Zebre in Parma in a high-scoring game. If anyone needed a reminder of how competitive, and therefore tough, this competition can be, then that was it. The DHL Stormers are heading to Parma next week and after losing their opening game in Swansea they will be under pressure against a team that looks to be becoming incrementally more competitive with each passing year.

The Munster defeat means that the three teams that won the first three editions of the competition have all lost already, with the Stormers' defeat being coupled with the Glasgow Warriors' loss last week to Ulster. And we’ve only seen two rounds.

Full time at Stadio Sergio Lanfranchi 🏟️

Thank you to Zebre, and to all our travelling fans who came to support us.#SUAF 🔴 | #ZEBvMUN pic.twitter.com/wGHp3yGW3d

— Munster Rugby (@Munsterrugby) September 28, 2024

EARLY AFTERNOON GAMES AT ALTITUDE FAVOUR SA TEAMS

The South African sides of course have only seen one, and why the home wins were predictable was because the games were played at altitude. We know that altitude isn’t that much of a stumbling block if you visit South Africa at a stage of the season when it is not that hot and the game is played at night or in the evening.

The Glasgow Warriors' win over the Bulls in last year’s final at Loftus was a case in point - they played the final in the evening, and the Warriors didn’t struggle in the same way they did when they played an afternoon game at Loftus during the league phase of the competition.

The Bulls game against Edinburgh that opened the campaign for Jake White’s men kicked off in mid-afternoon, so the altitude factor that the players from visiting teams get reminded of courtesy of a plaque placed in the stadium tunnel, would have been there. So the Bulls’ win should have been predicted, but Edinburgh’s competitiveness and combativeness in the game perhaps not so much. The Bulls only settled the game late.

The Emirates Lions and the Vodacom Bulls make winning starts in the #VURC 💪

The Hollywoodbets Sharks and DHL Stormers suffer defeats on the road in their first round of the season 👇 pic.twitter.com/VcaSltcv5d

— SuperSport Rugby (@SSRugby) September 28, 2024

It was the second time that Sean Everitt’s team have lost narrowly this season. Last week Edinburgh were denied by just two points by the efficient Leinster unit, who followed up in their second game by easily outplaying the visiting Dragons, who in defeat still did show signs of improvement on their past two quite lamentable seasons.

The other South African team to win was the Emirates Lions, and if there is anyone that did not see this one coming they just haven’t been paying attention to how rare it is for an overseas team to win at altitude in an early afternoon game. This game wasn’t even early afternoon, it was played at lunchtime, kicking off at 12.55pm.

Fortunately the weather wasn’t quite as hot as it might have been, fortunately  not apparently as uncomfortable as it was in Nelspruit, where many of the media people and Gauteng rugby supporters were watching on television in the buildup to the test match at the Mbombela Stadium.

But still, if you are wanting entertaining rugby, and you are wanting both fans to feel comfortable and players to feel safe from heat exhaustion, rugby matches should most emphatically not be scheduled for that time of day at any stage of the South African summer.

LIONS CONFIRM CHALLENGE FOR TOP EIGHT

Ulster, after their impressive and some might say unexpected win over Glasgow the week before, never threatened and never came close to their anticipated level of play, and it wasn’t surprising. But it was a good start for the Lions, who were impressive with the way they put aside the abject disappointment they would have felt after the Carling Currie Cup final defeat the week before.

The Lions have been getting systematically better with each URC season and last season were only just denied a place in the top eight and the attendant Champions Cup and playoff qualification. It came down to their last game of the season against the Stormers in Cape Town. It is going to be a tough season because it looks like most teams will be more competitive, but the Lions look like they have a good chance of making it into that elusive top eight this time around.

One of the teams expected to be more competitive is of course the Hollywoodbets Sharks, but they got off to the poor start that their coach John Plumtree would have been fearing when they lost narrowly to Connacht in Galway.

Galway is a tough place to go to, particularly for an opening game, and only the Sharks will know if the load of the past few weeks, with the questionable staging of the Currie Cup playoff rounds in what should have been the URC’s pre-season window, had any impact. Certainly though this was a game that conformed to last year’s script, where the Sharks somehow appeared fated to find ways to lose, rather than the one we were starting to get used to in the Currie Cup where they found ways to win.

ONLY COASTAL TEAMS KNOW IMPACT OF RESCHEDULING

For a long time the Sharks were in front, and it was the same for the Stormers against the Ospreys, but for the Cape team, there was a sameness with some of their most recent games against a team that is starting to become a bogey side for them. Last year the Ospreys surrendered a late bonus point when the Stormers scored late in Cape Town to lose by less than seven, whereas this time it was the other way around - the Stormers were pressing for the win at 30-24 down with just four minutes to go before conceding a penalty on attack that resulted in the pressure being transferred and the Ospreys scoring at the opposite end of the field.

Like the Sharks, only the Stormers will know what impact the timing of the Currie Cup, and the postponement of the opening round of the URC to accommodate the domestic final, might have had on their performance. They though had the opposite problem to the Sharks - whereas the Durbanites might have been overdone after their tough games, the late changes to the schedule threatened to leave the Stormers under-done.

Weekend Vodacom United Rugby Championship results (Round 2)

Glasgow Warriors 42 Benetton 10

Leinster 34 Dragons 6