URC WRAP: Sharks lead the way ahead of crunch derby round

The Vodacom URC log doesn’t look quite as healthy after two games as it did after one, but if you consider the teams that have played their matches at home are in the top three and the away sides return to South Africa with six points from two games, it hasn’t been a bad opening phase.

It’s a big weekend coming up in the URC as we see the first South African derbies, and after losing overseas, the DHL Stormers and Vodacom Bulls will feel some early pressure as they host the Hollywoodbets Sharks and 10Bet Lions in Cape Town and Pretoria respectively.

Of course the games are important, but none of the teams have had the calamitous start that would make a defeat in the derbies a train smash.

IT’S A MARATHON - JUST ASK LEINSTER

If you want to confirm the truth about the cliche that this 18-round competition is a marathon and not a sprint, you just have to look at who the champions are and what they went through at the beginning of last season - which for Leinster is a repeat of 12 months ago.

When they lost to the Sharks at the weekend, it was the fourth defeat for them on South African soil in succession - last year they lost to the Stormers and the Bulls, and this time it has been the Lions and the Sharks that have done so for them. Both times Leinster toured at the time they requested their tour to this country to take place, at the beginning of the season.

Last season, Leinster lost twice and came back to win the competition. And that memory should allay any inclination for them to panic. They know it is early days. At the same time, they can’t lose too many more early games, as last season they only sneaked into the top two, which gave them their home ground advantage in the Dublin final against the Bulls, in the last round of league play.

But Leinster do appear to have settled on their approach to the tour that over the past two seasons has started their URC campaign. Yes, they always play to win, and they are disappointed to lose, but across the two games played in SA, they have given a lot of fringe or emerging players opportunities. In other words, they’ve spread their depth, given game time to squad players, and this is the best time of the season to do it.

EARLY ROTATION WILL PAY OFF LATER

Not that rotation of selection was entirely volitional. Last week the Ireland international players who played in the southern hemisphere leg of the Nations Championship in July had to sit out, and that would have directed Leo Cullen’s selection. And it wasn’t volitional for the SA teams that they missed some of their big artillery last week either. The Springboks were playing an outside-the-international-window game against Australia in Perth the same weekend.

It goes without saying that getting those players the Stormers and Bulls who did not play in the opening weekend to the Northern Hemisphere for this latest round of games wasn’t a realistic option. So both teams went understrength in their two tour games. This will provide them with the same benefit that going understrength will provide Leinster. The payoff may come later in the season.

NO NEED FOR PANIC AT STORMERS

Considering the Stormers pretty much butchered their challenge at The Hive in Edinburgh through a bizarre and freakish malfunction at the lineout and yet still only lost by four points at a venue where they lost 35-7 the last time they were there, there’s certainly no need for panic in the Cape team.

The loss of Andre-Hugo Venter to a head protocol early in the game cost the Stormers a game that, given their clear dominance for long periods even when they weren’t getting lineout ball, they should have won at a canter. It was definitely a missed opportunity, and their coach John Dobson saw it as that afterwards, but then if you’d offered the Stormers six log points out of a possible 10 from a tour that saw two 4G pitch games against tough opponents, Connacht being the other, before the tour, they may well have accepted it.

They accumulated those points while giving invaluable experience of playing overseas to youngsters like Riley Norton and Yaqeen Ahmed, and testing out their depth in key areas. Edinburgh can consider the points they accumulated as a present from the Stormers.

Munster thoroughly deserved their win over the Bulls on Saturday night and dominated the last half hour of the game. They should have won by more than four points, but in the end it was only four, and you have to remember that the Bulls had none of their Boks in tow and their team is made up of Boks these days (Siya Kolisi did play for the Stormers).

So again, no real need for any teeth gnashing; we will know a lot more about the Bulls when they get back home for this weekend’s derby against the Lions.

SHARKS PRODUCED ANOTHER IMPRESSIVE DISPLAY

Ditto the Stormers, who host a Sharks team on Saturday that they may have underestimated when they played them at the DHL Stadium last year but definitely won’t do so again. It isn’t just the fact that the Sharks ended up beating them twice in the space of a week last season, two results that had a big impact on their ultimately failed attempt to finish in the top two, but their current form that should put the Stormers on red alert.

Leinster were some way from full strength, but the team fielded at Hollywoodbets Kings Park was definitely stronger than the one that the Lions beat last week, and any win over Leinster is something to celebrate. As they did against the Ospreys in the first game, the Sharks looked the part of a team that is undergoing a growth spurt, or is about to. They were impressive in several areas of their game.

But the litmus test will be this week against a Stormers team that should have several Boks back, although Dobson might have to think carefully about how many start and how many finish, as cohesion can be disrupted if you select unwisely.

Lions coach Cash van Rooyen doesn’t have that kind of concern as he looks ahead to Saturday’s game against the Bulls. He can only bring back two Boks, with both Quan Horn and Morne van den Berg having played off the bench in their ultimately comfortable win over the Ospreys. It was a game where the Lions were sloppy initially but got it together in the second half, although it is debatable that they will enjoy the same leeway in the forward battle when the Bulls are the opponents.

SECOND ROUND VODACOM URC RESULTS

Benetton 19 Connacht 22

Edinburgh 17 DHL Stormers 13

Cardiff Rugby 40 Zebre 27

10Bet Lions 35 Ospreys 19

Dragons 38 Scarlets 26

Hollywoodbets Sharks 26 Leinster 20

Glasgow Warriors 33 Ulster 33

Munster 26 Vodacom Bulls 22

Saturday's South African derbies:

ROUND THREE FIXTURES

Glasgow Warriors v Connacht (Glasgow, Friday, 20.45)

Dragons v Ospreys (Newport, Friday 20.45)

Vodacom Bulls v 10Bet Lions (Pretoria, Saturday 13.30)

Zebre v Edinburgh (Parma, Saturday 16.00)

DHL Stormers v Hollywoodbets Sharks (Cape Town, Saturday 16.00)

Ulster v Munster (Belfast, Saturday 18.30)

Scarlets v Benetton (Llanelli, Saturday 18.30)

Leinster v Cardiff Rugby (Dublin, Saturday 20.45)