They are all pretty much sure of being part of the playoffs but if they want to reach what they should have set as their goals heading into the last phase of the Vodacom URC season, the three South African teams still in contention should be in knock-out mode in the final round.
By being outlasted by Leinster in Dublin, not to mention also done in by a very dubious TMO call, the Fidelity SecureDrive Lions are still vulnerable to dropping out of the top eight completely should they lose to Munster without accumulating a bonus point and the unlikely happens, meaning that the teams currently behind them, including ninth placed Connacht, all win.
Should Sean Everitt’s Edinburgh beat Connacht in Edinburgh on Friday night it will assure the Lions of their first ever top eight finish and place in the URC playoffs and qualification for next season’s Investec Champions Cup. They will get the same outcome from wins for the DHL Stormers and Glasgow Warriors over Cardiff and Ulster respectively.
The good thing for the Lions is that their game at Thomond Park is the last of the weekend so they will know what they need. The likelihood is that they will start the game already in the top eight, and playing for a higher position on the log. Whether a top four finish, meaning they get a home quarterfinal, is still on will depend on the Vodacom Bulls, currently fourth, tripping up against Benetton.
BULLS SHOULD STAY IN TOP FOUR
That’s highly unlikely to happen given that Benetton, who have no chance of progressing any further in the competition beyond this game, looked so flat and disinterested in their “dead rubber” game against the Hollywoodbets Sharks. And the game is at Loftus. But fifth place on the final log will secure second prize for the Lions - a derby quarterfinal just down the road from their headquarters against the Bulls at a Pretoria venue where they have won this season.
As a win in Limerick will remove any possibility that they die wondering, the Lions will go all out to beat Munster as if it is a playoff game, and naturally the Bulls, given that an upset at the hands of the Italian team would probably knock them out of the top four, will do the same at Loftus.
Ditto the Stormers. They can’t finish lower than third on the log but they will want to finish at least in the top two, which will give them a home semifinal should they get that far, and with Glasgow, who are now one point ahead of them in top position, set to play Ulster at the same time, the Cape team will still be playing for a first ever top of the log finish in Friday’s clash with Cardiff.
FRUSTRATING WEEKEND FOR LIONS AND STORMERS
It was a frustrating weekend for both travelling teams. The Lions weren’t expected to be as good at the Aviva Stadium as they have been at Ellis Park over the past few months, but they would have come a lot closer to Leinster were it not for the highly debatable chalked off Siba Mahashe try in the first half.
The conversion had already been attempted and the game was about to restart when referee Hollie Davidson was alerted by the TMO to take another look. With the ball already in the Leinster scrumhalf’s hands when Lions wing Erick Cronje went in for the tackle that dispossessed him and led to the try off turnover ball, even the Irish commentators felt it was a harsh call.
At the very least it was a marginal one and when it takes until the game is about to restart for the TMO to make a call to the referee, and then another lengthy debate and series of replays before a decision is made, then it is definitely not the clear and obvious infraction that surely TMO’s have been introduced to the game to adjudicate on.
The Lions were right to feel aggrieved and even more so when Davidson a few minutes later awarded the try that took Ireland into a 14-0 lead that condemned the visitors to be chasing a game when they should have been just two points behind (the conversion to the ‘non-try’ had been missed).
They should have been aggrieved because the same exhaustive process that went into the Mahashe call was not followed, with Davidson deciding Leinster had dotted the ball down under a mass of bodies. The try scorer though had laid the ball back for his teammates to play, which is usually an indicator he knows he hasn’t dotted down, and he looked quite surprised when the try was awarded.
Backing the referee to make on-field calls, as was the case for more than a century before technology was introduced, has merit, but then it needs to be universal and there needs to be consistency.
There was no other angle on that try provided by the television producers, or asked for, but let’s not head back into the debate of last week around the French television producers sparked by Bath coach Johann van Graan’s comment after his team had lost their Champions Cup semifinal to Bordeaux-Begles. That can be covered later in a column later in the week.
What is sufficient to say for now is that there was good reason why the two Springboks of a previous era, Schalk Burger and Akona Ndungane, in their role as studio analysts for Supersport pointed to the trend of calls made around technology tending to go to home teams when South African sides are overseas (or any team is visiting France for that matter).
And a good reason too for the Lions to feel they had been robbed. Although by the end of the game it was clear Leinster, who in this game had a lot to thank Jacques Nienaber’s defensive system for, had outlasted them, there would have been a different psychology to the game had the Lions not been foisted with a 14 point deficit to make up earlier in the piece.
STORMERS WOUNDS WERE MORE SELF-INFLICTED
The frustration around the Stormers was less match officiating related, although another referee might well have yellow carded Ulster and awarded a penalty try to the Stormers for the incident in the second half when scrumhalf Imad Khan was setting up to score a try and was tackled by a player who was off his feet.
In the end the Stormers will have been thankful for a TMO intervention, that being the one that picked up the high tackle on wing Leolin Zas that led to the decision to award the visitors a match levelling penalty try. A share of the spoils got the Stormers three points and it ensured they stayed in the top two. But there were self-inflicted wounds that prevented them from scoring the comprehensive win that their dominance on the night should have warranted and director of rugby John Dobson would be right to view it as two points lost rather than three points gained. On several occasions the Stormers looked like they were going to take the game by the scruff only for silly elementary errors, including two quite ridiculous penalties conceded by Evan Roos on the Ulster tryline when his team were building up to score, that cost them. Given the above argument around why it is harder to win overseas, the Stormers are going to have to work hard on their discipline this week and they also have a few issues around their contestable kicking set-up that might need adjustment before the Cardiff game.
SHARKS YOUNGSTERS BROUGHT SOME CHEER TO DURBAN FANS
They, like the Lions and the Bulls, are at least still in the fight, and for all three teams a win this weekend will put them in a good position heading into the knock-outs that start in the last weekend of the month.
The Sharks of course were the odd team out when it came to chasing something concrete this past weekend, but they at least gave a small glimpse of a better future when younger stars like Zikethelu Siyaya and Jurenzo Julius were at the forefront of their big win over Benetton. A better future that is provided the Sharks employ a recruitment department that is better at retaining the young players coming through their system than the current one appears to be.
Arguably the performance of the weekend was produced by Connacht, who comprehensively outplayed Munster in Galway and in so doing made sure that they stay in the race for a top eight finish. Their win will have been welcomed by the South African teams, well particularly the two in the top four, as Munster were still in the race for even a top two finish before they were denied even so much as a consolation bonus point by their fellow Irish team.
Connacht under Stuart Lancaster have become a dangerous animal and it looks at this stage that they could well be returning to Cape Town, where they won a few weeks ago, for the quarterfinal. The smart money should be on the Stormers ending second, for they should start as favourites against Cardiff, while a win over Edinburgh will probably secure seventh for Connacht.
But who knows, for the Connacht win has left Ulster vulnerable to dropping out of the top eight and needing to win against Glasgow in Ravenshill on Friday. On the evidence of the tenacity they showed in staying in the fight against the Stormers, Ulster could well get the result at home that would open the way for the Stormers to return to pole position in the final week.
All the permutations make for a thrilling finale to the league season.
Round 17 Vodacom URC results
Ulster 38 DHL Stormers 38
Glasgow Warriors 40 Cardiff 17
Vodacom Bulls 54 Zebre 19
Ospreys 27 Scarlets 20
Hollywoodbets Sharks 46 Benetton 7
Leinster 31 Fidelity SecureDrive Lions 7
Dragons 15 Edinburgh 24
Connacht 26 Munster 7
Log positions after 17 games: 1. Glasgow 60; 2. Stormers 59; 3. Leinster 58; 4. Bulls 54; 5. Lions 54; 6. Munster 51; 7. Cardiff 50; 8. Ulster 50; 9. Cardiff 49; 10. Sharks 41; 11. Ospreys 39; 12. Edinburgh 38; 13. Benetton 33; 14. Scarlets 25; 15. Dragons 25; 16. Zebre 15.
Final round fixtures
Cardiff v DHL Stormers (Cardiff, Friday 20:45)
Ulster v Glasgow Warriors (Belfast, Friday 20:45)
Edinburgh v Connacht (Edinburgh, Friday 20:45)
Hollywoodbets Sharks v Zebre (Durban, Saturday 13:45)
Vodacom Bulls v Benetton (Pretoria, Saturday 16:00)
Leinster v Ospreys (Dublin, Saturday 18:15)
Scarlets v Dragons (Llanelli, Saturday 18:15)
Munster v Fidelity SecureDrive Lions (Limerick, Saturday 20:45)