Bulls, Sharks and Stormers carry SA’s URC hopes into the post-season

In terms of United Rugby Championship quarterfinal representation South Africa dominates with three teams in the last eight, but it’s not a guarantee of success.

The Bulls and Sharks finished second and third on the standings after a gruelling 18-round phase, with the Stormers showing some late season form to snare fifth place.

Three teams in the top five is nothing to sniff at and is a little reminder that despite some inconsistency from the Sharks and Stormers in particular, South African rugby remains in a healthy state.

It’s very seldom that any South African team plays at full strength in the URC because of injuries and, more irritatingly for club coaches, the agreement to rest Springbok players.

Eben Etzebeth of the Sharks in their match against Scarlets at Kings Park Stadium. (Photo : Steve Haag Sports / Gallo Images / Getty Images)

That makes the three-team representation alone one worth acknowledging.

For a club such as the Sharks, with a Bok-heavy playing roster, the resting of Test players is a particularly tough juggling act for coach John Plumtree. But it’s also fair to point out that the situation with the Boks is part of an agreement with MyPlayers and the South African Rugby Union (Saru), to which all the clubs agreed.

It’s true that the agreement might be akin to “an offer you can’t refuse”, but it is transparent to the clubs, which means the decision to recruit multiple Boks is not always a good one when they have to miss up to six rounds on the round-robin phase.

Until South Africa finds a way to align completely with the northern hemisphere’s season, which requires playing the Rugby Championship in the Six Nations window, there won’t be a two-month off-season in the calendar.

That means the situation with the Bok players will continue to be problematic at URC level.

Play-offs

Despite these problems, South African teams have rallied in the URC. The Bulls and the Sharks have home quarterfinals against Edinburgh and Munster respectively, while the Stormers have to travel to Glasgow to meet the defending champion Warriors.

Starting with the Stormers, they face a tough challenge. Winning on the road is never straightforward, while the Stormers also have a headache after Damian Willemse’s red card during last Friday’s 34-24 win over Cardiff at the DHL Stadium.

He will miss the quarterfinal and is likely to be out of the semi-final should the Stormers progress. Coach John Dobson was naturally unhappy as Willemse had been the Stormers’ best player on the field until the moment his shoulder connected with Cardiff wing Gabe Hamer-Webb’s face.

“He was stuck. I don’t think he was trying to hit with the shoulder… I think he was trying to turn,” Dobson said after the game. “The implications, I’m sure, are going to be poor for us. I’ve got no doubt. We can’t appeal until there is a decision. I don’t see them overturning that. It’s a disaster for us.”

Despite the Willemse situation, which will be a problem, Dobson was reasonably optimistic about the Glasgow challenge considering his team’s late-season rally.

They beat Connacht, Benetton, the Dragons and Cardiff in the final four rounds of the regular season, to move up the log.

Those four teams all posed different questions that the Stormers, despite chopping and changing their own team, found answers to. But the Stormers did lose 28-17 at home against the Warriors in a regular season match in Stellenbosch in the sixth round.


“It’s nice that we’ve played four teams with really good attacks over the last four weeks. It’s a good play-off test,” Dobson said. 

“The whole thing today was to keep our momentum, protect some players and say goodbye to some guys who won’t play another home game. I think we got all that right.”

Initially the Stormers believed they might have to travel to Durban to face the Sharks, but the log changed over the last two weeks and it became evident they would have to travel abroad.

“I was unequivocal that we wanted to go to Durban, and now I think we’re quite relaxed. This team will play whoever,” Dobson said.

“Obviously our goal was to host a quarterfinal, so that’s a disappointment. I think we’re good enough to be in the top four despite our budget, and that’s got to be our goal for next season.”

Bulls home

The Bulls will have confidence going into their quarterfinal against Edinburgh at Loftus thanks to a four-match winning streak and home ground advantage.

Akker van der Merwe of the Bulls on his way to score his try during the United Rugby Championship match against the Dragons at Loftus Versfeld last week. (Photo by Gordon Arons/Gallo Images)

They thumped the Dragons 55-15 in their last regular season game at home, which was also a show of mental toughness with the group still coming to terms with the death of former stalwart Cornal Hendricks last week.


“I just said to them [the players] now that it was a different week, something that we’ve never experienced [mourning Hendricks],” White said after the Dragons match.

“I even finished with 14 men as well. I took ‘Soplepel’ [skipper Ruan Nortje] off, just because I wanted to see whether we could defend and play without a lineout caller.

“I deliberately did that because I want to see whether or not [they can cope] if I put them into situations where we can’t always control.

“And the message is, we’ve done all the hard yards now to get into the play-offs. We needed a why, and this is the why.”

Munster ready for Sharks

The Sharks will start with home ground advantage against Munster, but for the Irish team it’s another challenge they are embracing.

Munster won the 2023 URC by beating the defending Stormers in the final in Cape Town, having won away against Leinster and Glasgow in the semis and quarters that year. Munster know what it takes to win it the hard way.

The Sharks ended their regular season with a lacklustre 12-3 win over the lowly Scarlets, but they did score a 41-24 win over Munster in round six in Durban.

Plumtree was not happy with the performance against the Scarlets.

“We had a lot of lineouts in the game, especially in the first 30 minutes, and had a lot of possession and territory, but we couldn’t build any pressure with the ball,” Plumtree said.

“There were too many basic mistakes, which got pretty frustrating for the boys. It was like no matter how hard we tried, nothing was going well.

“The defences of both teams dominated, and it didn’t look like there was much space [in which to attack]. And again, you’re playing in these dewy conditions. It was a pretty frustrating night for both teams.

“It wasn’t much of a game of rugby, to be honest. We have to be better than that. The players are frustrated too. There were a few issues around our attack tonight. We mucked up our launches, just through inaccuracies. It looked to me that we were trying very hard but there was just one more mistake. We just couldn’t get anything right. It wasn’t a good performance from us, and we have to really look at the reasons why and get better.

“We’re lacking accuracy in our game. We’re training really hard and we’re looking really good and we’re putting all those skills under pressure in training, but it’s about transferring it to the game and we’re not quite nailing that. I’ve got a lot of experienced players in my team and they don’t have to be told that.

“Next time we run out here it will be knockout rugby, and we’ll have to play much better if we want to carry on in the tournament. Because from now on, the stakes go up.” DM

Quarterfinals
Friday, 30 May
Glasgow Warriors vs Stormers, Scotstoun Stadium, Glasgow, 8.35pm
Saturday, 31 May
Bulls vs Edinburgh, Loftus Versfeld, Pretoria, 1.30pm
Leinster vs Scarlets, Aviva Stadium, Dublin, 4pm
Sharks vs Munster, Kings Park, Durban, 6.30pm