With the Springboks due to start their international season against the Barbarians in Gqeberha at the weekend the rugby focus is switching to the national cause but there’s one important business awaiting the Vodacom Bulls before they make the transition.
It’s an important bit of business too, the Vodacom United Rugby Champions Grand Final on Friday night, for while their magnificent comeback from an early season crisis to make the decider is in itself a heady achievement that deserves celebrating, a win over Leinster at Croke Park will be seismic to their standing as a team.
With four appearances in URC finals in the five seasons the competition has been played, the Bulls have stacked up as consistently the most competitive team. The DHL Stormers and Leinster have both played two finals, which is the next best to the Bulls - in other words, half the number. The other two teams to play URC finals, Munster and the Glasgow Warriors, have only played in the showpiece game once.
ALL THE OTHERS HAVE WON THE TITLE
The difference between the Bulls and those four aforementioned teams is that all the other teams that have played in the Grand Final have had the experience of winning it. The Stormers won it in the inaugural season, 2021/2022, Munster won it in their only appearance in the final in Cape Town a year later, Glasgow Warriors did the same at Loftus a year later. Leinster, expected at the inception of the competition to be the perennial winners, have in fact only won it once - which was last year.
A Leinster win will see them take the lead when it comes to the number of wins, but a Bulls win will do more than just ensure that there are five teams on one win each. It will also allow them to properly take hold of that most consistent team in the competition, something that will remain elusive until they’ve tasted success in the final.
The mention of Leinster being forced to go to Loftus for their 2024 semifinal cues why, although they go to Croke Park as underdogs for Friday night’s game, they definitely won’t be going in without hope. For while the Bulls may have to reinvent themselves to some considerable extent if they are to replicate the suffocating defence that the Stormers employed with good effect against Leinster in last week’s semifinal at the AVIVA Stadium, you only have to think back two years for evidence that the Bulls do know how to bully a Leinster pack.
VURC 2025/26 GRAND FINAL TOURING SQUAD 🐂 @Vodacom #URC | @URCOfficial_RSA pic.twitter.com/h7zPMF7YD3
— Official Blue Bulls (@BlueBullsRugby) June 12, 2026
SUCCESS IN DUBLIN WOULDN’T BE NEW TO THE BULLS
They did so with telling effect in that 2024 semifinal, and while Croke Park is far removed from Loftus as a venue, and last year’s final between these two teams was one-sided in favour of Leinster, it won’t take too much from the Bulls for them to raise some old unwanted ghosts, some of them inspired by what the Springboks did at the AVIVA Stadium on 23 November last year, to haunt their opponents with.
Remember too that although it was at a different venue, the RDS Arena, the Bulls have won a playoff in Dublin before - they won the 2022 semifinal with some degree of comfort.
The recruitment, which was ironically driven by the Bulls’ former coach Jake White, has been very good since then for the Bulls so they arguably do have a much stronger team now than they had in 2022. Particularly now that the Pretoria team seems to be settling better under their new coach Johan Ackermann, with those incidences of the Bulls moving away from the more direct template that works best for them becoming fewer and fewer, though still not completely absent, as the season wanes.
The Bulls’ chances of a winning in Dublin depend a lot on their forwards, but also on how their experienced international statesmen flyhalf Handre Pollard directs proceedings outside of the man who should surely be joining his more travelled teammate in Bok match day squads this season, scrumhalf Embrose Papier.
In Kurt-Lee Arendse the Bulls have pace and strike power out wide that the Stormers maybe lacked when they got transition opportunities in the semifinal, and there’s also the X-factor of Canan Moodie and Willie le Roux to pose a threat to Leinster.
A STOP START GAME WILL FAVOUR VISITORS
However, the Bulls might be making a mistake if they focus too much on getting those players opportunities, at least not from a phase play approach, because that would be playing into Leinster’s hands. The best way to beat Leinster, which the Stormers might well have succeeded in doing last week were it not for the Ruan Ackermann red card, is to deny them the momentum and rhythm they need by turning it into a set piece dominated, stop start game. As mentioned, it might be a stretch for the Bulls to expect to completely replicate the line-speed and physicality of the Stormers’ defensive effort, but some degree of replication will come in handy.
The Bulls have taken a strong 32-man squad to Dublin and while Leinster are a much tougher obstacle than the Glasgow team they played on the grass of Murrayfield in their semifinal, they do travel with hope. After all, it’s hard to remember when last they lost (it was in fact the first weekend of April when they went down to Glasgow in the Investec Champions Cup round of 16 fixture at The Scotstoun) so they will also be going in with confidence and surely also the desperation that comes with having come short in three previous finals (plus the Rainbow Cup final against Benetton in Treviso in 2021).
If they win it will also stymie the anticipated and probably undeserved narrative around their record in finals.
Vodacom URC Final
Leinster v Vodacom Bulls (Croke Park, Dublin, Friday 20.30)