Not a good Friday for SA teams in URC

It was a frightful Friday evening for South African teams in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship (URC). However, it was not totally unexpected with a below-strength Stormers taking a beating against Ulster in Belfast.

I expected Ulster to win against a Stormers starting XV that included just three players who started in their championshipwinning final last season.

Ulster were also not at full strength but they were at home and, in this league, home ground advantage is a huge plus. The results support just how tough it is to win away from home, especially in another country.

I picked Ulster to win comfortably by 15 points. They won by 30 and it could have been 50, such was the ease with which they saw off a team representing the league’s champions. Perspective is pivotal here because those who played in Belfast were Stormers in name, but they weren’t the titlewinning Stormers in player quality or in approach.

The result emphasised the difference in quality between the best 15 and the next best, and the challenge for coach John Dobson in the next two seasons is to narrow the gap in quality when he ranks his players one, two and three in the pecking order.

The Stormers, at their DHL Stadium home, have won 20 matches in succession. Before Friday’s mauling, they were second in the URL standings and had ensured a historic first last-16 home play-off against Harlequins in the Champions Cup.

I picked Ulster to win comfortably by 15 points against Stormers

The first team will play in that match and everything will be different in weather, location and buzz. This is the reality of the new world of rugby for South Africa’s professional franchises. Equally for the teams up north. One week the match will be played in 30 degrees sunshine and the next it could be two degrees. Ulster are a good team. They lost both times in Cape Town last season, but could quite easily have won. They were denied victory in the league fixture through a controversial refereeing decision and it took an injury time try and touchline conversion from Manie Libbok to beat them in the semifinal.

The Belfast beating was no surprise, but I didn’t expect a decent Bulls team to lose the way they did against the Scarlets in Wales, and I didn’t expect such brainless game management in the final 10 minutes, when they fought back from a 27-7 deficit to trail 30-28.

Twice, within a few minutes, the Bulls were awarded a penalty which was a gift for the accurate boot of flyhalf Chris Smith. They turned down the first three pointer, which would have given them the lead, psychologically killed off the hosts and silenced the fervent crowd. Typically, they kicked to the corner and stuffed up the resulting maul.

It was a lesson: Take your points and ensure the lead, back yourself to exit effectively and put the heat back on a team that would be mentally shot after blowing a 20-point lead. It was a lesson not learned. The Bulls again refused to take the threepoint option, kicked to the corner and again messed up the lineout maul. The mindset to go for a possible five and not invest in the value of a probable three points was madness in the context of the game and the time on the clock.

The failure of the Bulls to score in that moment and the possession handover to the hosts reignited the home crowd. They found their voice again and the Scarlets found their confidence. The momentum shift was monumental, and a combination of a Bulls yellow card and one-player home team advantage turned the prospect of a fabulous 31-30 comeback victory into a depressing 37-28 defeat.