Some are deeper in the mire than others but it would be fair to say that all four South African teams are under pressure to win as they head into the third round of the 2023/24 edition of the Vodacom United Rugby Championship.
The Hollywoodbets Sharks and the Emirates Lions, with three defeats reflected on their record, would appear to be under more pressure than the Vodacom Bulls and the DHL Stormers, who have both won twice and lost once, but that is only if you take a surface view. At the very least, the difference in the pressure faced by the teams is one of degrees, with the team perhaps having different reasons for why winning in the fourth round is so important.
For the Bulls and Stormers it comes down to what they need to get from their respective four match tours, both of them chasing targets that arguably the Sharks have already fallen short of, while the Lions’ good run in the corresponding tour that opened last year’s campaign is now beyond them but they can still break even if they win their remaining two tour matches.
YOU NEED MORE THAN ONE TO BE CONSIDERED SUCCESSFUL
Bulls wing Sergeal Petersen was stretching it a bit when he suggested to the media earlier this week that one win on tour is enough for it to be seen as successful. We know what he means, and it is beyond debate that touring the northern hemisphere at this early stage of the season has massive challenges. It is also true that the teams that contested the inaugural final in 2022 did so after starting out their respective campaigns that season with four match tours that featured just one win for each of the Stormers and the Bulls.
That the URC is a marathon and not a sprint is becoming a bit of a cliché, and there is plenty of time to recover from a poor start. That particularly appears to be the case this season, with only the current log leaders, Connacht, being able to claim that they have gone through their three games without blemish (Benetton and Munster are also unbeaten but they have a draw on their respective records).
However, a one-win tour when you play four games would not be a successful trip if that one win was against Zebre and all the other games were lost. Bulls coach Jake White and his team will know that, so while both of them will be played on the artificial pitches that all the South African sides are struggling to get used to, they should be looking for at least one win from their remaining tour games against Cardiff and Edinburgh.
The Bulls scored their inaugural URC win in Cardiff in September 2022 and should draw some inspiration from that fact. They also gave Ulster a good game at Kingspan Stadium the week before they hammered Parma so it’s not like they are down on form currently. A minimum of two wins should be their target according to where they want to be as a team in this competition, and it will be. They can still get three wins, and, considering what is to come for them, aiming for a 75 per cent success rate from their tour is not unrealistic.
STORMERS NEED TO BE BETTER OVERSEAS
The Stormers are arguably on a tougher tour than the Bulls given that they don’t play Zebre and also have to play two of the other three teams that made it into last year’s top four, with the other games being played at venues they have yet to win at in the URC.
The Stormers weren't helped by the refereeing in a horrible first half against Glasgow Warriors last week but appeared to have found their feet in the second half. Very few would have made them favourites to win at the Scotstoun, so it wasn’t as if the defeat was unexpected. What they must do next though is win, particularly as they have a repeat of last year’s final against Munster to look forward to after Saturday’s clash with Benetton in Treviso, and this time it is at Munster’s home ground of Thomond Park.
The Stormers failed to win on their only previous visit to Treviso, which was, in fact, their first ever game in the URC, and while the Cape side have grown immeasurably since then, Munster found two weeks ago that a trip to Treviso is by no means a gimme. Their coach, John Dobson, was right to not overreact to last week’s defeat, but he will acknowledge that the pressure will be ratcheted up ahead of the trip to Munster if his team go down twice in a row.
The Sharks and the Lions are, of course, in desperate need to get a win to their name, something the Sharks should be favoured to do in Parma in the first game of the weekend even though they only just squeaked home in the corresponding fixture last year. The Lions have lost thrice but none of their defeats has been by more than five points so they will want a change of like as they come up against an enigmatic Scarlets team in Llanelli. Enigmatic because they do seem so much better on their home field than they looked when they were thumped twice on their recent tour to South Africa.
The plum game of the weekend if you look at the URC from a global perspective is Friday night’s Belfast derby between Ulster and Munster. Ulster are under early pressure following their narrow defeat to Connacht in Galway last weekend.
WEEKEND VODACOM UNITED RUGBY CHAMPIONSHIP MATCHES
Zebre v Hollywoodbets Sharks (Parma, Friday 7.30pm)
Sharks coach John Plumtree said his team desperately needs the spark to the confidence that comes from a win and his team should be able to provide that against a Zebre team that was well beaten by the Bulls last weekend. Put it another way, if the Sharks don’t win against the perennial URC cellar dwellers they are in more trouble than we thought as they look forward to starting their home campaign against high-riding Connacht next Saturday. The Sharks have had a tough opening to their tour with matches away against champions Munster and then Leinster but they would have expected more from their neutral venue clash with the Ospreys in London.
Prediction: Sharks by 15
Cardiff Rugby v Vodacom Bulls (Cardiff, Friday 9.35pm)
Those not initiated to the URC and the importance of home-ground advantage, and perhaps also unaware of the fact that the Welsh teams were denied the use of their international players last weekend, will look at the results of the first three rounds and think this should be a walk in the park for the Bulls. After all, the team that beat Cardiff last weekend at Parc Y Scarlets were thrashed by 50 at Loftus at the start of the season.
But it doesn’t work like that, and Bulls coach Jake White is more likely to remind his players about the defeat they suffered to Scarlets when they were in Wales last year than what his team did to Dwayne Peel’s men at altitude three weeks ago. It is another game being played on an artificial surface, with the Bulls not being the only South African team struggling to adapt to the newness of it, and while the Bulls beat Cardiff in Cardiff in the inaugural URC season, Cardiff were also the first team to beat the Stormers in a long while when they won at Arms Park last October. Still, the Bulls look to be in good early-season form and my money says they will win.
Prediction: Bulls to win by 7
Ulster v Munster (Belfast, Friday 9.35pm)
Munster hammered the Dragons last weekend to pick up some confidence after being held to a draw by Benetton the week before, but the Dragons game was on their home patch. Ulster by contrast lost to Connacht, but that game was away from home, with Galway likely to be an even more difficult place to visit this season than it was in the past now that Connacht have been emboldened by their semifinal appearance in 2022/23. So what do you go on? Derbies are always difficult to predict, but what Munster do have is a good record away from home - they won all three play-off games last year away from home and were unbeaten on their South African tour that preceded the playoffs - and they showed in drawing off the final move of the game against Benetton that they have retained their never-say-die attitude that made them champions.
Prediction: Munster by less than 7
Benetton v DHL Stormers (Treviso, Saturday 5pm)
The Stormers had a lot to be frustrated about last Friday night. It wasn’t just the somewhat dubious refereeing calls in the scrums and their own lineout dysfunction that prevented them from getting their hands on the ball in the first half, it was also their own error rate. The Glasgow Warriors made mistakes too, but they paled into insignificance compared to those of the Stormers who, judging from the amount of slipping, are also struggling more than most to adapt to the still-alien synthetic surfaces.
They’re back on grass against Benetton and the conditions should be more favourable to the game they like to play, but they have to be more disciplined than they were seven days ago against a team they have yet to beat on their home ground (admittedly they’ve only played in Treviso once). Benetton drew with Munster two weeks ago and won against the Lions last week so the Stormers know it could be a tough game, but if they want to be seen as the consistent challengers for silverware that their first two seasons in the URC suggest they are, this is a game they should be expected to win. Their overseas record in the competition - three wins in 12 starts, which did include three draws - needs improving.
Prediction: Stormers to win by 8
Ospreys v Glasgow Warriors (Swansea, Saturday 7.15pm)
Glasgow started the season with a great win over Leinster and then ruined it by slipping up against Connacht in their next game before hitting an upward spike in their performance graph the following week against the Stormers. Both their wins were at home, both required big performances. The loss was away. They now need to show they can reproduce that form on the road against an Ospreys team that were significantly weakened when they surprised the Sharks last week. The Welsh team should have talisman Justin Tipuric back after he was given the Sharks game off to play for the Barbarians, while of course, the Warriors have had their Scottish internationals back for a few weeks now.
Prediction: Glasgow to win by less than 7
Scarlets v Emirates Lions (Llanelli, Saturday 7.15pm)
The Lions will be looking at their season so far and thinking to themselves that the three marks filled into the loss column could so easily have been ticks in the win column, which would make their season look so different. But being competitive doesn’t crack it if you don’t get across the line often enough for it to translate into more successes than failures, just ask the three nations that went down by one point in the World Cup playoffs to the still-celebrating Springboks.
In theory, the Lions could turn it around and break their duck on Saturday, but we don’t know. The Scarlets were down on strength when they came to South Africa and got pumped by the Bulls and Stormers and presumably also last week when they won an important Welsh derby against Cardiff. They’ve never been easy to beat on their home ground of Parc Y Scarlets and memory doesn’t throw up any instances where a South African team has ever won comfortably there. The Stormers had to rely on a last-gasp Ruhan Nel try to get them home in a decisive final game of the league stage there in the season they won the URC.
Indeed, while the Lions beat Scarlets in Johannesburg the last time these teams met, they were well beaten (36-13) on their previous visit to the Scarlets’ home ground.
Prediction: Scarlets to win by 10
Edinburgh v Connacht (Edinburgh, Saturday 9.35pm)
Former Sharks coach Sean Everitt made a good start to his tenure as mentor of Edinburgh with two wins in the first two rounds, with the loss last week to Leinster in Dublin being more or less what was expected. We wrote at the time that the game would be his litmus test, but that was wrong - playing one of last year’s semifinalists on your home field is even more so. Connacht are unblemished but they’ve played only at home so far, so this is a big test for them too. Everitt’s former team will be watching with interest as they host Connacht next week.
Prediction: Connacht by 7
Dragons v Leinster (Newport, Sunday 3.15pm)
The Dragons have done nothing to suggest their form of the past few seasons will be turned around any time soon and it will be a major shock if they do it against Leinster, who have recovered from their poor start against Glasgow.
Prediction: Leinster by 18