We have had four completed regular seasons in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship and that is enough time to start establishing who the big guns are and a pecking order when it comes to consistency in the competition.
And it says something about the URC and how the form book has been turned on its head in the playoff phases, or the Finals Series as the organisers of the competition call it, that neither of the two most consistent teams in the four years have lifted the trophy.
Leinster, with three top of the log finishes out of four, and the other was last year’s third placed finish, are way out top when it comes to consistency in league play.
If you were to use the regular season finishing positions to draw up a table of consistency, with the least number of points signifying the winner, the Dublin outfit would win by a country mile.
Three multiplied by one plus three gives you six, which is eight less than the second placed Vodacom Bulls, who have finished second on the log twice, fourth once and sixth as their lowest.
Not that there is much to choose between the Bulls and their arch-rivals from the Cape, the DHL Stormers, who finished second in 2022, third in 2023 and have followed that with two consecutive fifth placed finishes.
That gives the Bulls 14 points to the Stormers’ 15, but you could argue that the Stormers have been more successful because they have won the URC and the Bulls haven’t. The Stormers, who placed second in the inaugural URC season, beat the fourth placed Bulls in the 2021/2022 final in Cape Town.
LEINSTER ARE CONSISTENT IN PLAYOFF FAILURE
Mention of finals raises an interesting point about Leinster - whereas the Bulls and Stormers have both contested two finals so far and the Bulls should be strongly favoured to make it three this season, Leinster have yet to go beyond the semifinal stage.
All three of their exits so far have been on the penultimate weekend of the Finals Series - the Bulls shocked them at the RDS Arena in Dublin in 2022, Munster went to Dublin and won in 2023 and the Bulls defended their Loftus fortress against Leinster at the last four stage last season.
So the Leinster consistency in the league phase has gone in the opposite direction in the playoff phase, meaning that perhaps we should be lumping Leinster, the Bulls and Stormers together as the top three URC teams of the last four years and not set Leinster apart from the SA duo.
And if we do give more weight to playoff success, then the Stormers and Bulls come out tops as they have won five playoff games each, whereas Leinster have won only three (their three quarterfinals).
The two other teams to have won the URC, the Glasgow Warriors and Munster, are a bit off the pace when it comes to league consistency. Glasgow only finished eighth in the first season before managing three consecutive fourth place finishes.
They won the competition from that position last season, winning a semifinal against Munster in Limerick and a final in Pretoria to give the lie to the assumed importance of home ground advantage in a knockout game. At least in this competition.
GOOD OMEN FOR STORMERS
Munster of course enjoyed the most freaky away passage through the playoff phase en route to lifting the trophy in 2023 - they finished fifth on the log so had to travel to Glasgow for their quarterfinal, Dublin for their semi and then Cape Town for the decider.
Recognise that route? Ironically, it is exactly what the Stormers face now - like Munster two years ago they finished fifth and, like the title winning Munster team did, if they win in Glasgow next Friday they will almost certainly be heading to Dublin for their semifinal.
Here’s another bit of irony - the Stormers finished with exactly the same number of log points, 55, as Munster did when they won the title.
So that’s a good omen for the Stormers, although the one thing that has changed this year compared to previous seasons is that Leinster aren’t going to be balancing up their URC challenge with their quest to be kings of Europe by winning the Investec Champions Cup.
This is the first year since the URC came into existence that the Irish team is not playing in the main European final, so they can focus fully this time around on grabbing much needed silverware by winning the URC.
If they do they will be the standalone as the most consistent URC team as they will have won as many titles as any other team but also have won the log three times. The next two in the consistency stakes, the Bulls and Stormers, have yet to top the table, and so far only Irish teams have managed that (three times Leinster and once Munster).
ULSTER AND SHARKS BLIPS REMOVED THEM FROM RATINGS
Informatively, the Stormers’ late rally after a poor start to their 2024/2025 URC campaign means they remain the only team other than Leinster to have never finished outside the top five.
The lowest the Bulls have finished is sixth, while one of the most consistent teams of the first three seasons, Ulster, this season bombed to 14th so can’t feature in the consistency ratings.
The same can be said for the other South African team to have featured in URC playoffs, the Hollywoodbets Sharks. They finished fifth in the first season and lost out in their quarterfinal to a last-gasp Chris Smith drop-goal in Pretoria before dropping to eighth in 2023. In 2024 they did what Ulster did this season by plunging to 14th.
So the Big Five thus far in the URC have been Leinster, the Bulls, Stormers, Munster and Glasgow. They are the only teams who have made the playoffs every season.
Table for URC league consistency (points equating to accumulated finishing positions in brackets)
1. Leinster (6) - 2022 1st, 2023 1st, 2024 3rd, 2025 1st.
2. Vodacom Bulls (14) - 4th, 2023 6th, 2024 2nd, 2025 2nd.
3. DHL Stormers (15) - 2022 2nd (champions), 2023 3rd, 2024 5th, 2025 5th.
4. Munster (18) - 2022 6th, 2023 5th (champions), 2024 1st, 2025 1st.
5. Glasgow Warriors (20) - 2022 8th, 2023 4th, 2024 4th, 2025 4th.
The challengers who lack consistency:
6. Ulster (25) - 2022 3rd, 2023 2nd, 2024 6th, 2025 14th.
7. Hollywoodbets Sharks (27) - 2022 5th, 2023 8th, 2024 14, 2025 3rd.