It may have come as a shock to many, especially Irish fans, to see both Munster and Leinster eliminated in the United Rugby Championship (URC) semi-finals over the weekend.
The bigger surprise was arguably Munster going down 17-10 at home against Glasgow, while the Bulls at Loftus saw off Leinster 25-20.
Home ground advantage and the altitude was always going to be a leveller for the Bulls against Leinster, and it was, but they still started as underdogs against what is effectively a shadow Ireland international team. The hosts had to produce an 80 minute performance, arguably their first of the season, to win. And they did.
After doing it the hard way last year, meaning traveling to Cape Town for their final and before that also being on the road for the other two playoff games, Munster had everything in their favour this time as they hosted the team they beat at the Scotstoun in the quarter-final round last season.
Huge praise for Hanekom 😲![CDATA[]]>👏
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Breyton Paulse backs the Vodacom Bulls man 👇 pic.twitter.com/nUbWwZH0Za
Not on your nelly
Surely it was just a case of Munster holding their nerve and everyone would be back at Thomond Park the following week for the decider? Think again.
In both games there were good attacking moments, but it was the defence that stood out. The Bulls resisting a sustained 21-phase Leinster attack with eight minutes to go, and then turning the possession over, was what won them the game as much as the unlikely hero Sergeal Petersen’s two tries.
Rory Darge and company for Glasgow Warriors were as central to making Munster’s life at the breakdowns as misery, as Marco van Staden and Cameron Hanekom were for the Bulls earlier in the day many thousands of kilometres away.
The upshot of the two absorbing, exhilarating and intriguing semi-finals is that the Glasgow Warriors, with a point to prove on the highveld after their disastrous tour in May, will be travelling to Loftus for the 2023/2024 decider. There was talk about the potential of an Irish shut-out in the deciding week, and it is, but in a different way to expected - it is not the Irish shutting out the other nations, but the Irish being shut out.
And that underlines the success of the competition. One of the reasons the URC organisers went for South African participation in what has now become a five nation, cross-hemisphere competition was that it needed the greater jeopardy that would come with an erosion of the Irish hegemony.
A competition dominated by one nation or one team can lead to it becoming a bit staid and you just have to tap into the complaints of many Formula 1 fans at the current domination by Red Bull and before that Mercedes as an example. “Another day, another win for Max Verstappen,” will appeal to the Dutch driver’s supporters, but not many neutrals. Ditto Manchester City’s growing domination of the Premier League.
There’s certainly no-one dominating the URC after three seasons of the current format, and if there was domination, it isn’t coming from the Irish. This will be the second year in three that there hasn’t been an Irish finalist and the third year in succession that South Africa will host the final, with the deciding game yet to be played outside this country after two seasons where the Stormers had home ground advantage and now the Bulls.
There has been one Irish team that has won the competition. Munster managed that when they shocked the Stormers away last year. But Munster have also been the only Irish team to appear in a final since it became the URC. South Africa have made up four of the six appearances in a final - the Stormers twice and now the Bulls twice. Scotland have one and Ireland one.
From a South African viewpoint it is certainly a far cry from the Super Rugby years, where invariably we watched from afar as usually New Zealand teams faced off or there was a Trans-Tasman face off. The Sharks were the beaten finalists in the first year, 1996, and again in 2001, but otherwise this country had to wait until 2007, when the Sharks and Bulls met in an all South African final in Durban, for the first success in that competition.
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