Ulster has gone to the summit of the Vodacom United Rugby Championship but a closer look at the log and what comes next shows that the race for both silverware in this year’s competition and spots in next year’s Champions Cup is still wide open.
Ulster went top with a comprehensive win over fellow Irish team Connacht at the weekend, a game in which they avenged the unexpected loss to Connacht last October that halted their momentum. However, the fine-print needs looking at - yes, Ulster are top, and long time champions of the competition in its previous guise as the PRO14, Leinster, are fourth, but all is not what it seems at first glance.
Although Ulster has a six-point lead on Leinster, the team from Belfast have played two games more than the one from Dublin. If Leinster wins the two games in hand, they don’t even need bonus points to go past Ulster and back to top.
Indeed, Edinburgh, currently second on the log and two points adrift of Ulster, might be more problematic for Leinster in the sense that the Scots have played just one game more, as have the other Scottish team, Glasgow Warriors, who are third on the overall log with 31 points, one ahead of Leinster and five behind Ulster.
So it’s very nip and tuck at the top and no team can really claim to be in pole position or dominating. It will only become clearer once the number of games has evened up, and there’s been more parity in who plays at home and who plays away. And that last point is also a very good reason not to write off the South African teams.
It is certainly not as parlous a situation for the local sides that the log, with the DHL Stormers being the pool leaders with just 18 points and in 10th overall, suggests it is. While all the South African teams have now played eight games, which is the same number as Leinster, who are 12 points distant, there’s an anomaly that spawns a distorted view - none of the overseas teams has played in South Africa yet.
We saw in the days when the Toyota Cheetahs were playing in the PRO14 that the story tends to unfold very differently when the teams who have the advantage in northern hemisphere conditions come south of the equator. Even in their worse years, the Southern Kings were often competitive against the top teams when they played them in Port Elizabeth.
And the South African teams are about to go into an extended run of home matches against those teams. There is one round of derby games to go this weekend, then the local sides travel north for one game each - the Stormers visit Connacht, the Vodacom Bulls go to Parma Zebre, the Cell C Sharks to Benetton and the Emirates Lions to Leinster - before coming home for an appetising sequence of games on South African soil that extends through until late May.
There’s one last derby round on the weekend of 9 April but otherwise, it is all South African teams against overseas teams at home until 21 May, and the Stormers, Bulls, Lions and Sharks will fancy their chances of winning on home soil. They will certainly back themselves against the Italian, Welsh and maybe the Scottish teams, with perhaps the key to local success riding on how they go against the Irish sides.
There are certainly some appetising games on home soil against Irish teams in the not too distant future for the South Africans, such as the Bulls hosting Munster in a few weeks time and a resurgent Stormers playing Ulster in Cape Town in early April. If the South African teams can add to the wins they expect to get against the Welsh, Scottish and Italian teams with some big performances against the Irish, the entire log can take on a different complexion.
Manage that, and the race for local teams won’t just be for the top half of the log positions that will enable teams who don’t win their pool (Shield) to earn Champions Cup qualification, which some are assuming, but for the URC trophy itself.
Sharks coach Sean Everitt lamented after his team lost to the Stormers this past weekend that the understrength nature of some of the rescheduled games being played by overseas teams is an obstacle to any South African advancement up the log.
“We have seen teams produce some upset results which mean they strengthen their hand in the quest for Champions Cup places and makes it difficult for us to make an impression on the log,” said Everitt.
That is true, but if the South African teams use the conditions to their advantage and win the bulk of their home games against foreign teams, they should be up there challenging by the time we get to the second half of May. After a slow start because of the Covid disruptions and the South African teams’ need to get accustomed to touring again, the URC promises to become really exciting from here.