There will be a first-time winner of the United Rugby Championship (URC) after Saturday’s final in Dublin and there will also be one team facing the reality that their status as nearly men in the battle for silverware is starting to become properly entrenched.
That there’d be a first-time winner became apparent when the reigning champions, Glasgow Warriors, were knocked out by Leinster in the first semifinal at the weekend, thus leaving the Bulls and Sharks to play it out at Loftus to see who would be heading to Croke Park this Saturday as rank underdogs.
It is the fourth time in as many editions of the competition that there will be a SA team in the Grand Final, but the first time that a local team has had to travel. On the positive side, the Bulls in some senses have nothing to lose. Leinster will start as favourites on the basis of their team laden with Ireland internationals and the fact that this time around they really do mean business in a competition that for them has trailed the Champions Cup in order of importance.
The Bulls also have to travel, which is an obvious disadvantage, while the Sharks game, which they won 25—15 but it was really much tighter than that, was also one where they had to dig deep both physically and emotionally. The Sharks were always behind. Had the call that denied Ethan Hooker a try in the early minutes been allowed, and it was a very marginal call, it could have been a very different game. But that aside, it still looked like the Sharks were getting momentum and set to win the game in the third quarter, when a sequence of yellow cards cost the Bulls numbers on the field.
However, what the Bulls did this time was a complete reversal of their two close losses to the Sharks in league play — they clearly learnt from their mistakes then because this time it was they who were the composed team when the odds were up against them because of cards.
They showed a lot of big-match temperament and great defensive commitment and organisation in resisting the Sharks in that period and then they made the Sharks pay for not taking their chances in their period of ascendancy by clinching the game with a David Kriel try.
Clearly improving their strike rate when it comes to getting points on the board is the Durban team’s main learning for next season. That and they need to find a way to keep Eben Etzebeth fit. His loss in the build-up week was a big swing against the Sharks’ chances of winning.
The Bulls kept up their excellent record in semifinals. They’ve now won three. What they need to do is reverse the trend in finals, but to be fair beating Leinster is going to be a huge ask. If afterwards they are sitting with three losses in three finals, the context will need to be looked at before anyone rushes the word “choker” into print.
There has been context to most of their losses at the last hurdle, including to Benetton in Treviso in the 2021 Rainbow Cup final when they were playing overseas for the first time since the arrival of Covid. However, falling in the decider does start to become seen as a trend once they start adding up. Leinster are an example of a team that has had pressure introduced by the accumulation of losses in finals or semifinals, which for them now amounts to three in a final (Champions Cup) and three in a URC semifinal and one European semi.
The smart money will be on them redressing that and crossing a frontier by putting their silverware drought behind them with an emphatic victory against a team that looked out on its feet at the end of the semifinal.
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