When the DHL Stormers won the inaugural Vodacom URC title, the Vodacom Bulls contended with some justification that they were disadvantaged by the logistical hurdle they faced ahead of the final in Cape Town, but there will be no repeat should the teams again square up in the decider.
It wasn’t a complaint as such, for they finished lower on the log than the Stormers after all, so having to fly across the equator after they shocked Leinster at the RDS Arena in Dublin while the Stormers lay in wait after their home semifinal win against Ulster, was fair. But if, as is possible, the Stormers host the Bulls again, the travel factor will have been drastically diminished.
For the URC fixture list unveils something that hasn’t been spoken much about - instead of heading straight from a semifinal to the final a week later, in this edition of the cross-hemisphere and five-nation competition, there will be a two-week break before the decider.
The semifinal weekend is scheduled for a week after the quarterfinal, with both games likely to be played on Saturday, 6 June. The Grand Final is scheduled for not a week later, as was the case in all but one edition of the URC played so far, but a fortnight later - Saturday 20 June. That means that instead of the debilitating mad rush to get to a venue in the opposite hemisphere that is invariably the case for the travelling team in a URC final, the playing field will be levelled quite significantly by the extra time to travel and prepare.
THE FORTNIGHT HELPED MUNSTER WIN IN CAPE TOWN IN 2023
It is not unprecedented for there to be a two-week gap between the semifinals and the final in the URC - it happened in 2023, when the Stormers hosted Munster in Cape Town and lost. The reason for the gap was explained by the fact that in that year, the Investec Champions Cup, because it was a Rugby World Cup year, was played the week between the final two URC playoff rounds.
However in the other three years, there has only been a one-week gap, although that didn’t appear to bother Glasgow Warriors in 2024 when they edged home 17-10 away against Munster and then flew out to South Africa on the Sunday and beat the Bulls 21-16 at Loftus six days later. Those two finals, 2023 and 2024, are the two occasions the away team has won the final. The other two, the Stormers in the first year and Leinster last season, were won by the home team.
IF BULLS REACH GLASGOW THEY WILL PLAY ON MURRAYFIELD GRASS
The chances of a repeat of the 2022 all-South African final between the Stormers and Bulls in Cape Town aren’t great given that the teams go into the Finals Series ranked 3 and 4 respectively, but there is nonetheless a real chance and the 2023 final does offer some precedent (the Stormers and Munster that year were in fact seed 3 playing seed 5).
At this point, the Bulls’ chances of making it to another final would appear to be better than the Stormers just on the basis that the Stormers’ likely semifinal opponents should be Leinster, who look like they are heading back into their best form, while the Bulls’ likely semifinal opponent is a Glasgow team that is looking a bit vulnerable.
There is another thing strongly favouring the Bulls, which is that because of a clash with the planning for the Commonwealth Games, Glasgow won’t be using their usual home venue of the Scotstoun Stadium for their semifinal, and will instead be hosting the game at Murrayfield should they get through a tricky quarterfinal against the in-form Connacht.
The obvious benefit for the Bulls is that a game at Murrayfield will be played on grass, as will the final should it feature Glasgow - at the moment nothing has been finalised, and there was a chance they’d be hosting the game in Belfast, but it appears from UK reports that Murrayfield is now back on the table as a venue for the URC final. It had been written off initially due to a concert that is due to be staged there a few days before the final.
SACHA’S KICK MAY HAVE CLINCHED STORMERS HOME ADVANTAGE
Should the Bulls win through from their side of the draw and the Stormers somehow get past Leinster, or alternatively the Lions win their quarterfinal in Dublin and have to go to Cape Town for their semi, then the losing bonus point the Stormers picked up with a Sacha Feiinberg-Mngomezulu penalty on fulltime will become significant as it meant the Stormers finished ahead of the Bulls and will therefore host a final should both teams get there.
There is a lot to happen between now and then, and a quite freaky set of results needed, but the Bulls will have plenty of time to get back to South Africa and prepare properly for a Cape Town final, and the same for any overseas team heading to South Africa, or South African team heading to the northern hemisphere.
If the games go according to form, both the Stormers and Bulls will be travelling for their semifinals, which introduces another interesting question - with two weeks to wait before the final, do they stay overseas for that entire fortnight or do they fly home and back. It would make sense for them to stay, which would mean they will be more than adequately acclimatised by the time match day arrives.
The two-week gap, by removing the travel factor, or at least significantly minimising it, should make for a higher quality Grand Final. The Bulls having to play a decider in Dublin against Leinster just a week after winning a bruising semifinal against the Hollywoodbets Sharks in Pretoria strongly swayed the chances in the home team’s favour last year and that would have contributed to the one-sidedness of the game.