When the Vodacom United Rugby Championship returns in three weeks there will still be a good chance of two South African teams finishing in the top four and maybe three in the top five, but this weekend dealt a savage blow to any pretensions of a local team actually winning the trophy.
What was meant to be a statement round, with the Hollywoodbets Sharks beating a big team to pronounce their intentions, the DHL Stormers breaking through their big game bogey overseas and the Emirates Lions doing something similar, instead turned out to be a massive reality check.
The Vodacom Bulls did win comfortably and were excellent at times against Zebre but the only SA win of round 14 was an expected one. The Zebre had put in their big effort of the tour the previous week in Durban, where there was none of the altitude that would have played a role in their implosion in the last quarter.
The Sharks also helped them stay in the game in a way that the Bulls didn’t.
But Bulls director of rugby Jake White would probably be the first to admit that the litmus test for his team’s ability to win the URC wasn’t the game against Zebre but the one against Leinster the previous week.
And here, sorry to say from a South African viewpoint, the reality is a stark one - Leinster are going to have to implode in quite spectacular fashion this year if they are not to get their hands on the URC version of a trophy they used to hog when it was the PRO14.
Yes, the Bulls did beat Leinster at Loftus, but it was a seriously understrength Leinster team, they were playing at home, and they had to rely on a last gasp penalty in a game where, with the exception of in the scrums, for most of the way they were outplayed.
The local teams will cling to the hope that Leinster will do what they did in the first three seasons of the URC by dropping the ball in the knockout phase.
LEINSTER ILLUSTRATED GAP BETWEEN SA AND EUROPE’s TOP ECHELON
However, the portents of that happening again are not good. Leinster do seem to be on a different mission this season.
While they again sent their second stringers and even some third stringers to South Africa, as they have always done, they did it differently to two seasons ago when what was effectively a Leinster academy team lost by a record score at Loftus.
In many ways their performances in South Africa over the past fortnight, pushing the Bulls at Loftus and then beating the Sharks at Hollywoodbets Kings Park, shows us how far the road is that has to be travelled if local sides are to seriously compete in the Investec Champions Cup, which goes into the round of 16 this week without any SA participation.
While local coaches when they select understrength teams for overseas games, like they did in the pool phases of the Champions Cup in December, speak about wanting to win those games, it is hard to take them seriously.
You knew beforehand that the Sharks and Stormers weren’t going to beat Leicester Tigers and Harlequins away with their second teams.
With Leinster coach Leo Cullen you can take his pronouncements of intent when going understrength seriously. As shown in these last two games, Leinster going under-strength is not tantamount to raising a white flag.
There was an element of risk to their continued dominance of the URC log battle, but Cullen felt his selection policy could advantage his team’s in both competitions and he was right.
Saturday will tell when Leinster face Harlequins in Dublin whether perhaps he made a mistake by not giving his top team a run before the EPCR playoffs, but you get the sense Cullen knows what he’s doing.
And what he’s done is create a situation where he has a fresh first choice team for Harlequins plus now also fringe players who may be needed at some stage of the extended knock-out sequence to their campaign who have now had the experience of being competitive in big games in South Africa.
A BIG CONFIDENCE BLOW FOR SHARKS
And the reality is that what Leinster have is mighty impressive. It would be easy to come down hard on the Sharks after losing to a considerably weakened Leinster team, but a weakened Leinster team is clearly still a good one as Max Deegan’s men, inspired by the captain himself, played some impressive rugby.
That old saying about the next best team in the URC being the Leinster second team may not be far from the mark.
The Sharks though should be kicking themselves for the lack of composure that cost them at times when they had enough chances to take the game by the scruff.
For the result should have severely hurt their confidence by leaving them with the knowledge that there is going to have to be some kind of miracle take place if they are going to reverse it in a playoff game in Dublin against what would probably be a full strength Leinster team.
Of course the Sharks can be strengthened too by then, and never underestimate the talismanic effect of the still absent Eben Etzebeth in those rare moments when he does play on the Sharks team. Lukhanyo Am is also being sorely missed as well as the influence of Aphelele Fassi.
But somehow it seems laughable to suggest that a team that can’t beat a combination of Leinster’s second and third team on their home field can expect to beat their top team away.
WINNING OVERSEAS PLAYOFF LONG SHOT FOR STORMERS
And laughable is also how you’d describe the Stormers’ chances of going all the way given that to do that they will have to play playoff games overseas, where as they showed against Ulster they continue to conspire against themselves at venues where the home teams rarely need any help - because the marginal calls tend to go against visiting teams.
It does sometimes appear that it is hard for a SA team to get a break go their way in an overseas game, and it was the case again when the Italian referee Andrea Pardi red carded Stormers captain Neethling Fouche for an incident the howls of the indignation of the crowd alerted him to.
James Hume ran in so low against Fouche that you wonder whether instead it should have been him carded, but in any event it is hard to say what Fouche could have done to avoid the situation of an opposition player boring in on his arm. It is also hard to say what exactly he meant when Pardi kept repeating “It was an illegal act”.
Anyway, it would be stretching it to suggest the referee injured the Stormers as much as they injured themselves, with their best two attacking players - Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu and Damian Willemse - coming up with moments of madness either side of halftime that cost their team 12 points and ultimately the game.
The Stormers didn’t look that unhappy at the final whistle and they should have been pleased with getting two bonus points that looked highly unlikely heading into the last quarter. Those points could prove invaluable to them as the Stormers head in mid-April into a four game home run that will finish the league phase.
But it could have been different, they could have been sitting as high as sixth today, and still challenging for a top four finish, remote though that possibility would have remained.
Instead they face the reality that if they do get into the playoffs, they are going to have to win overseas games at venues viewed as iconic in terms of toughness to visiting teams - something they still haven’t managed to do even though they led the Ulster game by 17 points after just seven minutes.
LIONS STILL IN IT - JUST
At least for the Stormers the chances of a top eight finish remain strong, which you can’t say about a Lions team that just wasn’t at the races at Scotstoun against an admittedly impressive Glasgow Warriors performance.
In fairness to Lions coach Ivan van Rooyen, it was really their failure to get across the line as winners against Cardiff the week before that cost his team in their quest to stay in touch with the teams bracketed in the top eight.
There is still a chance for them though as, like the Stormers they return to play four successive home games, and this past weekend, where teams jumped from outside of the top eight to fifth or sixth, just how impactful one round can be.
The bottom line though is that South Africa needed a statement in round 14 and if it wasn’t forthcoming. If anything there was a negative statement about the local chances of adding to the Stormers’ triumph in the inaugural URC season.
Round 14 Vodacom United Rugby Championship results
Ulster 38 DHL Stormers 34
Edinburgh 38 Dragons 5
Vodacom Bulls 63 Zebre 24
Connacht 24 Munster 30
Scarlets 38 Ospreys 22
Hollywoodbets Sharks 7 Leinster 10
Benetton 20 Cardiff 19
Glasgow Warriors 42 Emirates Lions 0
Log Positions after 14 rounds
1. Leinster 62; 2. Glasgow 54; 3. Vodacom Bulls 50; 4. Hollywoodbets Sharks 45; 5. Munster 39; 6. Ulster 37; 7. Benetton 36; 8. Edinburgh 36; 9. Cardiff 36; 10. DHL Stormers 35; 11. Scarlets 33; 12. Ospreys 33; 13. Connacht 33; 14. Emirates Lions 30; 15. Zebre 27; 16. Dragons 9.