The Vodacom URC swings back into action in South Africa this weekend with a solitary derby in Johannesburg. The local teams are surely under no illusions after watching the Guinness Six Nations about what is required to win the competition. They need to get the better of a team that is almost an international side in everything but name.
The Hollywoodbets Sharks head to Ellis Park on Saturday to face the Lions at the start of what for them is a back-to-back derby weekend in Gauteng. The following week they head to Pretoria to face an even tougher test against the Vodacom Bulls, while the DHL Stormers, determined to put the record straight after their shock double reverse to the Sharks, will head to Johannesburg the same weekend.
The local derby phase will be completed with the big return north/south clash between the Bulls and Stormers at Loftus two weeks after that, 14 March, and thereafter all of them go into a sequence of six matches against overseas teams until the end of the season. All the SA sides have an extended home run to look forward to. The Stormers will be looking to those games to wedge them comfortably in the top four before they head overseas for a tough ending to the league phase of the season that sees them play two other top four contenders, Cardiff and Ulster, on their home fields.
WARRIORS GAMES WILL BE BIG FOR LIONS AND STORMERS
The Lions will join the Bulls and Sharks in seeking to make a top-eight finish a certainty and a top-four finish a possibility. Like the Stormers, they have one home game against an overseas team that will stand out above all the others - Glasgow Warriors, currently top of the URC log after recovering well from a shock opening defeat to the Italian team, Benetton, are due to visit both.
For the Stormers, that game will be at the DHL Stadium on 25 April and the Lions will get their chance the week before that (18 April) at Ellis Park.
That Glasgow will be formidable opponents was writ large in Scotland’s impressive 31-20 Calcutta Cup win over England in Edinburgh at the weekend, a result that could easily have been even more one-sided. Scotland should have scored when they were encamped on the English line in the middle periods of the second half, and the consolation England try that stopped it from being an 18-point defeat should have been checked by the TMO for a forward pass. Perhaps two.
Why we are equating Scotland’s win under Gregor Townsend with the Glasgow team that plays under Franco Smith is because there was a rarity about the Murrayfield game - for the first time in many years, there were no Edinburgh players in the starting team. There were no fewer than 10 Glasgow players in the run-on side, and while the man who operated as the conductor of the orchestra, flyhalf and captain Finn Russell, plays for Bath, most of the other significant contributors to the win were Glasgow players.
MURRAYFIELD SUITED SCOTLAND’S GLASGOW STRENGTHS
Of course Scotland winning against England is nothing new; this was their fifth win in the last six meetings and those who wonder why they don’t bring the same passionate energy to matches against other teams that they bring to the clashes with the ‘Auld Enemy’ do have a point. At the same time though there was also an overreaction to the loss in Rome the week before - the Olympico Stadium resembled a swamp because of the heavy rain that fell before and during the game, and that prevented the Scots from playing to their strengths.
As was shown against England, those strengths are the attacking skills of the backs, and apart from the aforementioned Russell and the Glasgow midfield pair of Huw Jones and Sione Tuipoluto, further Glasgow players in the form of South African-born wing Kyle Steyn and the other wing, Jamie Dobie, plus the loose-forwards Rory Darge and Jack Dempsey, the second row of Gregor Brown and Scott Cummins, and the relative newcomer at loosehead Nathan McBeth, were Glasgow players who excelled.
BENETTON’S LOG POSITION BELIES ITALY’S PROGRESS
There was a weird narrative being spun in some sections of the UK media after the first round of Six Nations fixtures that pinpointed the failure of the teams that participate in the URC, but clearly that was driven by people ignorant of the fact that Italy, who beat Scotland, are in fact a URC-represented nation.
And the Italy national side are also continuing a rise that belies the lowly 11th position that Benetton, who supply most of the Italian international players, currently occupy on the URC log. Italy were unlucky at the weekend not to follow up their win in Rome with one in Dublin, where Ireland continued to show signs of decline, although it also has to be said that they are profiting from their coach, Andy Farrell’s, recognition of which Irish team is in form in the URC.
Robert Balocoune and Stuart McCloskey were just two of a clutch of Ulster players who shone in their team’s 20-13 win. Ulster, like Glasgow, have already beaten both the Bulls and Sharks this season, but lie in wait for the Stormers, who they have struck up quite a strong rivalry dating back to the first URC season where the Stormers won two close games, the second of them the semifinal.
ELLIS PARK COULD BE A TITANIC BATTLE
The Lions and Sharks though won’t be thinking that far ahead this week, for they’ve been involved in some titanic struggles in the last few years. The Lions won in Durban at the start of January through a Hashim Pead try off the last move of the game, while the Sharks also won’t forget in a hurry the humiliation they suffered at the hands of the Lions on their last visit to Ellis Park for the corresponding URC game last season.
At the time the Sharks were coming off a great win over the Bulls at Loftus, just like this time they are coming off two great wins over the Stormers. But the Lions showed them no respect for what they had done previously and had effectively wrapped up the win by the 20th minute. It is going to be a litmus test for the Sharks’ much spoken of resurgence following the Stormers wins.
It’s going to be tough for the Sharks as the game kicks off at 2pm, something that is always to the advantage of home teams at altitude at this stage of the summer.
This week’s Vodacom URC fixture
Lions v Hollywoodbets Sharks (Johannesburg, Saturday 2pm)
Weekend Guinness Six Nations results
Ireland 20 Italy 13
Scotland 31 England 20
France 54 Wales 12
Weekend Guinness Six Nations fixtures
England v Ireland (London, Saturday 4.10pm)
Wales v Scotland (Cardiff, Saturday 6.40pm)
France v Italy (Lille, Sunday 6.10pm)