As Scotland went through their on-field warmup for their Six Nations finale against Ireland in Dublin, many thousands of kilometres away the Stormers were cutting the gap on the Glasgow team most of the Scottish players play for in the URC with an emphatic win over the Bulls.
That’s where rugby’s theatre of conflict switches now, with the URC and the two EPCR competitions, the Champions Cup and Challenge Cup, to be decided in the months that separate the end of the Six Nations with the start of the inaugural Nations Cup and the visit to Ellis Park by England in early July.
Though confined to a spectator role, the Springboks were the big winners after an unpredictable Six Nations that confirmed the rise of some teams and either burst the bubble or dented the confidence of others.
England and France fall into the latter two categories. With nothing to play for, the pressure was off for England, and they thrived by just going for broke and probably deserved to win the game.
But they didn’t win, and was heroic defeat enough reason to erase the question marks over the future of coach Steve Borthwick? I don’t think so. When they come to Joburg, they will be playing to avoid suffering a fifth consecutive defeat.
France deserved to win the title if not the match itself but should feel that they needed to make a more emphatic statement after their confidence-denting experience in Edinburgh. They did win with a clutch kick at the death, but the question marks over the French temperament were just reinforced by their bitty performance.
After watching his team concede another 46 points, to take the aggregate from the past two matches to 96, and another seven tries, France’s world-rated defence coach, Shaun Edwards, should be deeply concerned.
Or is it, as he suggested, that the game has changed, something that the Boks will need to note and prepare for before Ellis Park if it is true?
To me, having watched the game a second time, the spectacle came about as much due to some wretched defensive lapses from both sides as it did from the skill levels or any cutting-edge innovation from the two teams.
Scotland duly lost their shot at the glory of what would have been their first Six Nations title, something they were always likely to do against an Ireland team that, after 12 successive wins, properly has their number. But the Glasgow players in the Scotland unit still have something big to play for as they chase success in the URC and Champions Cup.
They host the Bulls in a Champions Cup round of 16 game at the start of April and then head here for a URC tour thereafter, which will include what could be a decisive clash with the Stormers for a top-of-the-log position. The Stormers’ full house of log points at Loftus partially makes up for their three-game blip, and due to the credit they had in the bank before that, they are now back up to second on the log.
It is hard to remember when last the Bulls were as bullied by a visiting pack as they were in the north-south derby. It was very much a back-to-basics approach by the Stormers, similar to what got them off to a 10-match winning start in the competition.
It may not have been a coincidence that the Stormers had Ruhan Nel back as captain and Deon Fourie helping him on the day they bounced back. Hopefully that pair will direct the team to stick with the emphasis on control rather than divert back to the quest for flash that derailed them in the two matches against the Sharks.
For the Bulls it felt like they had returned to the gameplan uncertainty that contributed to their long losing sequence at the start of the season and the Johan Ackerman era.
Not that it was a game where a focus on directness and forward strength would have got the hosts home, as the Stormers boasted by far the stronger pack.
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