Pink Floyd said it best when they penned the mighty ‘Breathe’ on the Dark Side of the Moon and clearly had this rugby season in mind:
Breathe, breathe in the air
Don’t be afraid to care
Leave, but don’t leave me
Look around and choose your own ground
For long you live and high you fly
And smiles you’ll give and tears you’ll cry
And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be
They then went on to something about run rabbit run, shamelessly appropriated by Tom Hanks in one of the most boring movies of all time, but the essence of the song could just about sum up the last couple of weeks of rugby and the next few to come. A quick disclaimer, I have no idea what the status of the Top 14 is, or even if they’ve finished last season yet, so in the interests of idle speculation, I’ll stick to the other two leagues, English first.
I’ve got home wins for both in the English semis, for no other reason than winning away is hard. Sale may have something to say about that, but I don’t think Sarries will. Northampton and Sarries have both been a bit iffy recently, with the Saints losing to Bath and Quins in the last month, but crucially, having the better of Sarries in their last meeting in late March. Sarries lost to Bath last weekend, pushing them below Sale into fourth, ending a three-match winning streak, with two of those on the road, at Bristol and Bath. So much for difficulty in winning away. Still, Saints’ only loss at home this season was in the second week, a narrow reverse to the Bears.
Bath versus Sale could go either way – Sale have emerged as the form side of the last few weeks, on a six-match winning streak, including the last match at Sarries, so they’re in a very good spot. Bath, though, have only lost twice at home this season, three- and one-point reverses, suggesting nobody bosses them at The Rec. Sale can do it, may well do it, but I had a fabulous high tea at the hotel adjacent to the Roman Baths, so I’m backing Bath to win a nailbiter!
Last round of league matches in the URC and it’s tight, very tight, almost – almost too tight. At the top of the pile, the Bulls will looking for five points in Durban to finish in the top two – or even top, if Ulster are able to beat current log leaders and form side Munster. That should be a terrific match, with Munster obviously wanting to finish in pole position, but Ulster similarly wanting to move above the Stormers and avoid a possible trip to South Africa if the Bulls falter in Durban. Which Leinster will pitch up this weekend? Can Cullen pick them up from the heartbreak of last weekend’s loss? I can’t see them losing to Connacht at home, but the bonus point comes into play, because Glasgow will surely get the full house against Zebre.
So, by my estimation, Glasgow will sit on 65 points come Saturday, with Leinster on 65 or 64, meaning Munster and the Bulls both need to win to regain those top two spots (I know, Munster could do it with a draw and try BP, but let’s not get too pedantic about this). I fancy Munster to stay on a roll (sorry boss), and the Bulls to win in Durban, but possibly without the BP. That may leave 3 sides on 65 trailing Munster. Wins would be the same (13 each), so then down to points difference. At the moment, the Bulls are best (+194), with Leinster 16 behind (+178) and Glasgow, courtesy of their mauling in the Lion’s Den, 40 behind (+154).
Will Glasgow be able to beat Zebre by more than 40 points to put the pressure back on the Bulls? Possibly, if they can get back on track after two bruising losses in South Africa. Leinster to win by at least 18 to put the pressure on the Bulls? Don’t think so – the Irish derbies are generally pretty tight affairs. The Bulls could, if the mood takes them, paste the Sharks, but equally the Sharks are likely to throw everything into it as a last hurrah in a spotty season in front of their home fans. Or not. If the Lions win in Cape Town (huge if, but not impossible), then one of Benneton or Edinburgh are out of the comp and I’d favour the Italians to prevail at home.
Then it’s a question of bonus points – who will finish 7th and get the last Big Cup Berth for next season? Ulster could go to 58 and fifth with a BP win, but more realistically, desperately need a bonus point to avoid the seventh/eighth place lottery and hope that neither of Benneton nor Edinburgh manage the full five pointer. That’ll keep them in 6th place. An Edinburgh win with a BP could lift them to fifth – if the Stormers get nothing from their home match with the Lions and Ulster likewise don’t win (or draw with BP etc). Benneton need a BP win to get a top six finish, but would rely on Ulster getting nothing (and possibly getting hammered in the process). Finally, the Lions could theoretically finish sixth, if they win with a BP and those above them don’t (Edinburgh and Benneton, one of whom is potentially out after their clash). With eight try bonus points, they have every chance, even if the Stormers are hot favourites at home. And then, of course, a win for Connacht and neither the Lions nor Benneton getting a point, would see them pip those two to eight place and the last QF spot.
All of which is a very long-winded way of saying hold onto your seats this weekend, the ride could be bumpy or a helluva lot of fun, depending on where the ball bounces and the dust settles. Bring it on!
Breathing exercises by Deebee7
Onna telly this weekend
Showing matches that are televised in the UK and Ireland or on popular subscription services. Bold indicates that it’s on a free to view channel. Times are in the UK zone, so adjust as necessary.
Friday 31st May
| Glasgow v Zebre | 19:35 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Leinster v Connacht | 19:35 | TG4 / Premier Sports 1 |
| Northampton v Saracens | 19:45 | TNT Sports 1 |
Saturday 1st June
| Stormers v Lions | 12:45 | Premier Sports 1 |
| Treviso v Edinburgh | 13:00 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Scarlets v Dragons | 15:00 | S4C / iPlayer / PremierPlayer |
| Sharks v Bulls | 15:10 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Bath v Sale | 15:30 | TNT Sports 2 |
| Munster v Ulster | 17:15 | RTÉ2 / Premier Sports 1 |
| Cardiff v Ospreys | 17:30 | BBC2 Wales / PremierPlayer |
Sunday 2nd June
| Toulon v Clermont | 17:00 | Premier Sports 1 |
| Toulouse v La Rochelle | 20:00 | Premier Sports 1 |
Ovally Balls 
Ulster denied a penalty try (twice) just before HT, and go in pointless.
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Ulster get a penalty and take the points this time, but then Lowe scores what is admittedly a brilliant try.
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Now Stockdale’s down injured, and the ref didn’t stop play quickly enough, so the players tripped over him.
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The referee is Andrew Brace, btw.
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McCann furra liiinnneee!
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Larmour scores again while Ulster are effectively down to 13 players due to Addison and Lowry being injured.
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C’mon Ulster! In rural SA so dodgy connectivity, but hoping the rugby is awesome! One thing I will say is that the wine is fine.
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But TRY Stewart Moore!
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Oh, that’s it. Van der Flier scores.
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Bastards score again.
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Piece of brilliance from Prendergast with the footballing skills, but fortunately they lose the ball!
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TRY Lowry!
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43-20 at FT, but it was a better match than that. We suffered from injuries and poor ref calls, and the boys played well. Leinster of course also played well, with particular nods to Lowe and Prendergast for their clever kicking skills.
Overall, I’m happy we made it this far, and have some hopes for next season.
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Mon Ra Weeedge!
Let’s see if we can beat the Stormers to have the right to lose to Munster next week!
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Yes we can!
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The feel good news of the week-end is the promotion of Vannes to the T14. First club ever from Britanny joining the elite, showing how rugby is growing outside its SW stronghold. Wonderful crowds and great spirit. Not sure they can stay up there for long but it’s a boost for the sport. Bretons playing for the national team will be the next step.
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Wooo! Bristol Bears Women have beaten Saracens to reach the Prem final.
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Glaws-Hartpury vs Bristol for the final. Local derby.
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Looks like I missed a great weekend of rugby whilst out in the sticks entertaining friends (‘friends’) with no interest in rugby. So it looks like – barring a massive upset – that Munster will be hosting one of the Bulls or Leinster in the Final in a couple of weeks time. Can’t see a repeat of the Weege Squeeze. The Bulls will have to be much better against Leinster than they were against Treviso if they’re going to the final. It’ll be interesting to see if they can get their defensive structures sorted better.
Warriors were by all accounts very good against the Stormers, who have slipped this season from the highs of the last two years. I have a feeling Manie Libbok may well have played his last match for the Boks too after yet another BMT failure with the boot (0/4 on the day).
Sets things up nicely for the Ireland tour here in a few weeks as well: if the Bulls do beat one of or both the Irish giants (very unlikely), will it sit at the backs of their minds for the tour? Will a Leinster victory give Ireland the boost they want ahead of the two Tests in July? Things to ponder.
Great send off for Courtney Lawes, a magnificent servant of the English and global game over the last 15 years or so, even if I wanted Bath to win.
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Hoping someone can answer what is probably not an easy question to answer, particularly this early in the piece, but looking at the results of the EU parliamentary elections and the surge in far-right voting, is it likely to have much impact on the UK elections coming up? Would Farage and mob hold up the results as a vindication of their views, or is it likely to have little or no impact? Would be a little ironic (not to mention grossly hypocritical) to use the EU as a flagbearer for their position, given their dislike of the EU.
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promotion of Vannes to the T14
@flair
We were in Brittany two summers ago and rolled up to a pre-season open training session there. Darren O’Shea (ex-Munster) was there (moving to Valence Romans for next season)
Got chatting – in our excrable French to a local – whose daughter was working in Cork – and he got Darren to come over to say hello.
Been following them since – came quite close to promotion in last few years, so nice to see they’ve finally made the jump…. I’m guessing it’ll be difficult to survive in T14.
Seem to have added a new stand at what was open end of the ground – so must be some money there….
Great for rugby in Brittany – always seemed like Ligue 1 was around 20-25% Breton clubs – though Lorient and Gwencamp/Guincamp were relegated recently – so that only leaves Rennes, Brest, and Nantes (do I miss one?)
I also saw Servette of Geneva were promoted from Federale 1 (if I read it right)
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@deebee
I’m a bit detached from UK politics now but generally FPTP voting makes it very difficult for smaller parties to win seats irrespective.
Whereas under Ireland’s STV, 10-12% would give a solid bloc of MPs/TDs to work with.
In 2010, LibDems got 57 seats (9% of the total) on 23% of the vote, Labour got 258 seats (40%) on 29% of the vote… Conservatives got 47% of seats on 36% of the vote.
In 2019, Greens got 1 seat from 2.6% of the vote and the SNP 48 seats from a ‘highly localised’ 3.9% (obviously not running as a party across all UK)
My gues is Reform might pick up the odd seat where they ‘ve highly localised support but will be hard pressed to do anything more than the odd “spectacular” – winning a Tory seat here and there….
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Ulster denied a penalty try (twice) just before HT
This was pretty poor reffing by Brace, a PT and yellow make a big difference going in at the break. However, already missing Treadwell and O’Connor – ye were fairly goosed once Izuchukwu went off.
This “generous” reffing does Leinster no good – and they miss it when like Peyper in 2023 decisions don’t go their way
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Thanks Trisk, makes sense once explained!
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Trisk – Treadwell, O’Connor and Hendo too! First 4 lock choices are now out. Just as well it’s the end of the season.
Deebee – nobody in the UK paid much attention to European elections when we were in the EU, so I don’t see that changing now. Farage had a press conference at lunchtime and doesn’t seem to have mentioned it.
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The lack of attention paid to being in the EU (other than all the scare-mongering) is really annoying. For example, because we’re in GDPR, we can opt out of Facebook/Meta’s data collection for their AI bollocks (I recommend you all do this), but we were never told the positive things, even by supposedly pro-EU sources.
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Refit – I don’t use any Meta services. :-)
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I have an old Facebook account, but haven’t used it in god knows how long. All my family use it though, so I got them to opt out of collection.
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Glad they listened!
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Trisk, Brittany is mostly football country, with a club in every village and half a dozen pro clubs. Bicycle racing is a close second ( lots of Bretons riders, Bernard Hinault being the most famous) so seing rugby taking up there is wonderful. I hope they can stay up in the T14 for at least a couple of years, to plant the seed.
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This “generous” reffing does Leinster no good – and they miss it when like Peyper in 2023 decisions don’t go their way
Trisk I sincerely hope they get no generous reffing this weekend (or when Ireland tour next month).
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@deebee
Noises coming out of SA make it sound like ye’re going to take this very seriously
Equally, I can’t see an experimental tour party on our side…. a win in SA to go with the win in NZ would be too hard to resist.
Now, if SA are coming at this “locked and loaded” then there’s a limit to the experimentation unless we opt for Leinster’s “take the espoirs to SA” policy….and set up inexperienced players for a complete doing over
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Trisk, Rassie is saying that nothing else matters than his tilt at a ‘threepeat’ in Australia in 2027 and results be damned in between. Don’t believe a word of it. The players and fans are gagging for this tour and the Kiwis coming over for two Tests as well. Outside of a World Cup or Lions tour, this is probably the biggest year I can remember since the All Black tour of 1996. The Bok players are tired of the Irish monkey on their backs and also know that Ireland will be coming with both barrels, something they relish. They’ve also been exposed to a lot of the hype in Europe about the World Cup supposed to have been a France-Ireland match and they’ll want to put down a marker on that score.
We don’t need anything to get us up for an All Black double-header, and there’s the added bonus that if the Boks win both of those, we’ll have a four-match winning streak against them, our longest since the 1937-1949 era and longest in the pro era. So, we’ll probably lose in Australia (again) and take a couple of scrappy wins against the Pumas, but the two double-headers against the Irish and Kiwis – that’s what counts this year.
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Good lord, got to stop watching the News at Ten. Starmer would sell his mum, his wife and his kids for a sniff of power. What a horrible choice.
Deebee, what Trisk said. You could have 40% of British populace voting Reform, and they would still not get a seat.
Well done Saints, hard luck Bath. Great final, ,managed to catch a stream just after Obano was sent off, and all I could think was that I hope he isn’t injured when I saw him on the bench. Is he not on the plane ??Thought the massive dip by Augustus just before the tackle should have merited a yellow, not a red.
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Plenty of talk down here about whether the Bulls have what it takes to beat Leinster tomorrow, with less consensus than our recent election results. Die-hard Bulls supporters, and the ostrich brigade who still believe that anything in SA is better than anything in Europe rugby-wise are talking up the Bulls and fortress Loftus. They point to the patchy recent form of Leinster in the URC (flatly ignoring the reality of second and third string sides playing whilst the first team focused on the Heine), set against a five match winning streak for the Bulls over the same period. Those less sure, but still looking for a Bulls win point to travel and altitude (hopefully the planes maintain that until landing) as being key factors, again ignoring the fact that their sole loss at Loftus this year was against Munster, another fearsome Irish outfit. In fact, the Irish sides have been the Bulls kryptonite this year, who have lost to all bar Connaught this season.
The Bulls are the top try scorers in URC this year and have scored about 100 points more than Leinster, but by the same token, both their key wings – Kurt-Lee Arendse and Canaan Moodie – are out, which will impact quite a bit on both their attacking edge and their fielding of the high balls, where both excel. The Bulls do have some excellent backs despite this, with Embrose Papier playing the kind of rugby at times that got him into the Boks, whilst Johan Goosen gets things moving in the backs, along with David Kriel (surely one of the unluckiest players to been overlooked for the Bok midfield) and Willie le Roux at the back. The pack is purring nicely and the Bulls front row got the better of the all-Bok, all-WC winning front row of Ox Nche, Bongi Mbonambi and Vincent Koch a couple of weekends ago. They’ll be the usual hard, abrasive and uncompromising Bulls pack with set pieces and close carrying and fringe defence their big pluses.
Where the Bulls have faltered in recent weeks is in defence, shipping too many points and not closing out matches when they’re well ahead. Both matches against Treviso showed this, and that’s something you simply can’t afford against a side like Leinster, who are so well organised, with so many top class players, both starting and off the bench. Whether Leinster bring 13, 14 or more Irish internationals is not really the point (well, it is, I suppose, but not the one I’m making, button it!): it’s the overall quality and cohesion of the side, with the bench pretty much good enough to start if needed, and giving them the continuity at the sharp end of the match to keep up the pressure, keep getting over the advantage line, and keep the opposition playing on the back foot. A fantastic side, who to my mind go into the match as favourites.
Leinster by 7-10.
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In the interests of fairness and not wanting the Scottish contingent to feel left out (like they do on the Graun), a preview of Munster-Glasgow:
Sorry lads, but it’s whiskey over whisky this weekend, as the smoothly triple-distilled Munster make it more lowlights than Lowlands for the lads from the capital. Adapting from the Glenlivet site*, the Lowlands region is close to Glasgow. Much of this is within the basins of the Clyde and the Forth, making it wet, dank and slippery. The area is fairly flat (much like a Warriors pass), and formed of sedimentary rocks like sandstones and clay (explains the dodgy scrumming), but this means that vast greenery can be seen for miles, especially if you’re a Munster outside back. And in celebration of the match being played in Limerick (and to Sag’s great annoyance), behold:
There was a young lad from Munster,
Who was built like a off-road dumpster,
Knocked big lumps off the Weege,
‘Til their skipper under siege,
Cried “enough! we’ve no more lustre!”
Munster by 10-14
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lads from the capital
???
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Saw that too Thaum.
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Not sure what I was thinking when I wrote that!* And I’ve actually been to a couple of pubs within drinking distance of Holyrood too.
Bulls side to face Leinster:
Willie le Roux, Sergeal Petersen, David Kriel, Harold Vorster, Devon Williams, Johan Goosen, Embrose Papier, Cameron Hanekom, Elrigh Louw, Marco van Staden, Ruan Nortje (capt), Ruan Vermaak, Wilco Louw, Johan Grobbelaar, Gerhard Steenekamp. Bench: Akker van der Merwe, Simphiwe Matanzima, Francois Klopper, Reinhardt Ludwig, Nizaam Carr, Keagan Johannes, Chris Smith, Cornel Smit
Bolded, because they need to be bold to beat Leinster. Strong front row that slapped the Sharks World Cup winning one around a couple of weeks back, two very good emerging locks, with Ruan Nortje tipped for a bright Bok future in the mould of Franco Mostert, an excellent back row – Bok Marco van Staden (nicknamed Eskom because he puts his opponents lights out**) packing down with two guys widely tipped to have long Bok careers themselves in Hanekom and Louw.
Backs less sparkling without K-LA and Moodie. I’d say that Seargal Petersen is okay, having been on the fringes of the Boks for a while without ever really making the step up, but he looks out of shape at the moment. Devon Williams is a definite step down from the starting wings, having only made a handful of appearances at top club level.
** Gallows humour – our national power utility, Eskom, can’t keep the lights on and blackouts are frequent and scheduled.
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It’s the hope that kills you…..
Two big games tonight and tomorrow involving Scottish sides. A win tonight for Scotland and tomorrow for Glasgow and I’ll barely be sober afterwards….
Then reality hits….
We’ll get gubbed in both games, and I’ll barely be sober afterwards…
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Sorry BB, three goals and a red card down in the first half.
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I know. At this rate I’ll be on to my second bottle of wine before the end of the game. None of our good players are playing well, and all of our bad players are playing badly.
On the other hand, Germany have been excellent.
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At least we’ll keep up out 100% record of never getting out of the group stages in a major tournament.
Sigh
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I’m on my second bottle of wine and eyeing the whisky without having seen the match. Just tuned it. Not good.
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One humiliating defeat down, one to go.
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A picture I saw last night made me laugh in a gallows humour way, the top half was – 8pm, Braveheart Mel Gibson, all wode, C’ mon Scotland.
The bottom half was – 8:30, pic from Trainspotting, “It’s shite being Scottish”
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Blue Meanies lose to Bulls!
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Blue Meanies beaten by the Bulls. Tight game and fun to watch (if you weren’t invested in the outcome).
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There was an interesting take on where the final could be held by the BBC before the start of the game…
The venue for the URC final depends on results in both semi-finals.
If Leinster win and Glasgow beat Munster in the other semi-final, Leinster will face Glasgow at Croke Park in the final on 22 June. If Leinster and Munster both win, the final will be at Thomond Park.
No mention of what would happen if the Bulls won. Maybe they just assumed Leinster would win?
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BB – judging by the half-listened-to commentary, I think it depends on how much Munster win by, should they win.
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