The Cape Town derby was a resounding endorsement of both Christmas rugby and the quality of the spectacle South African teams can produce, but at the end of the first round of Vodacom United Rugby Championship festive season action it is Leinster in their familiar pole position.
Leinster lost their first game of the season to Glasgow Warriors, who remain their strongest challengers, but have comprehensively overturned that slide and currently sit on seven URC wins on bounce.
The top two teams, Leinster and the Warriors, played in games that bookmarked the weekend, and both of them won. Franco Smith’s Warriors used their home ground advantage to telling effect in the first of the two traditional 1872 games against their derby rivals Edinburgh, denying their opponents so much as a losing bonus point in this first matchup between the two SA coaches Smith and Sean Everitt.
It meant Glasgow went top for the weekend, but Leinster overhauled them with their tight six point win in a low scoring derby against their arch-rivals and reigning URC champions Munster at Thomond Park in the last game of the Christmas weekend.
It means that the URC heads into the New Year weekend round of games with Leinster top by three points from Glasgow, who themselves are three points ahead of Benetton, who did what was expected of them in winning a close away derby against Zebre in Parma.
The Vodacom Bulls failed to end the recent run of success the DHL Stormers have enjoyed against them as they lost their seventh game in succession to the Cape side in a pulsating derby watched by an enthusiastic and boisterous 40 000 crowd amidst a test match atmosphere at the DHL Stadium, but they are still in the home playoff bracket in fourth position.
The Stormers, with another key derby against the Hollywoodbets Sharks to come this weekend, appear to have stabilised after their URC tour blip following their epic Investec Champions Cup win over La Rochelle and then their well deserved and well strategised win over the Bulls, and are in the top eight for the first time in a while.
That of course means playoff and Champions Cup qualification for next year, and with a run of home games to come, the threat of the Stormers not making it into the European elite competition appears to have eased for now. What they do need to do though is keep winning if they want to secure another home playoff by making it into the top four, with four points currently separating them from the fourth placed Bulls.
It was a weekend of mostly close and intensely fought derby games, with the closest being Ulster’s one point win at home to Connacht. The exceptions were the two Welsh games, with Cardiff and the Ospreys both winning with a degree of comfort, while there was a 12 point gap in the Glasgow/Edinburgh game.
Outside of the Cape Town match that attracted so much interest in South Africa, the plum game of the weekend was the game between the log leaders and champions Munster, which was played in difficult conditions at Munster’s home ground in Limerick. There was a full house for the traditional festive week game, which Munster had not won in the past four attempts, and that was extended to five in a game where there was a high error rate over the 80 minutes and where the only real period of dominance from either team was the control Leinster exerted when defending their six point lead in the last 10 minutes.
The Ulster win avenged two defeats to Connacht - the first being in the quarterfinal in Belfast last May, and the second being the more recent first round game in this season’s competition, when Connacht turned around a 17 point deficit to win by two points. Connacht trailed by seven points at halftime and were behind for most of the game, but they scored two second half tries to Shamus Hurley-Langton and Shayne Bolton to set up another grandstand finish.
This time though, unlike at The Sportsground in Galway in November, Ulster held on to secure the win that together with their success in the Champions Cup the previous weekend means it is two games on the bounce for a team that was in a losing streak.
The defeat means Connacht drop out of the top eight for the first time since they burst into the European qualification and URC playoff bracket towards the end of last season.
Christmas Weekend Vodacom United Rugby Championship results
Glasgow Warriors 22 Edinburgh 19
Ulster 20 Connacht 19
Zebre 24 Benetton 31
DHL Stormers 26 Vodacom Bulls 20
Cardiff Rugby 55 Dragons 21
Scarlets 11 Ospreys 25
Munster 3 Leinster 9