URC: Road to the play-offs

SPOTLIGHT: The pressure in the race for play-off places is mounting as the United Rugby Championship returns during the first bye week of the Six Nations.

There is a full round of fixtures that could go a long way towards determining some of the conference winners, with European qualification as well as play-off spots up for grabs.

Leinster are leading the competition by a country mile and they will expect to finish top of the final overall log regardless of what they do against the Dragons at the RDS Arena on Saturday.

The window of opportunity for others to catch them is getting narrower with just five rounds to go, and their advantage over the second-placed Stormers, who are making a good fist of their season as champions, is 11 points.

You could say the same at the bottom of the log, where Zebre has exactly the same number of points gap between themselves and the second-last team, the Dragons, that separates Leinster from the Stormers.

But most of the teams in between first and 16th have plenty to play for, with the 13th-placed Lions being in with a shout still of achieving their stated aim of making the top eight if they win their home derby against the Sharks on Saturday.

They have a game in hand on the teams ahead of them, so a five-point haul will put them within catching distance of those hovering around eighth place, including the Sharks themselves.

The ante is certainly high for the Sharks as they head to Johannesburg, for although they are in the top eight at present, they will probably need to be higher than that if they are to secure a place in next year’s Champions Cup. For qualification into Europe, a top-eight position won’t be enough if the winner of one of the conferences, which carries automatic qualification, does not finish in the top half.

And as it stands currently, the Welsh conference winners will be hard-pressed to do that, with both Cardiff and the Ospreys, currently 11th and 12th respectively, four points off the pace.

The Sharks’ visit to Ellis Park starts a crucial three-week sequence for them that will see them host Ulster the following week (in a Round Six catch-up match), before travelling to Cape Town for the return derby against the Stormers in the first weekend of March.

Speaking of Ulster, they have a crunch game coming up on Friday, when they visit Glasgow to play the Glasgow Warriors at Scotstoun.

The team from Belfast is in third place, seven behind the Stormers but with a game in hand.

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Dan McFarland’s team will desperately want to grab second place, which will mean them avoiding last year’s fate of having to travel to Cape Town or some other away venue for their semifinal should they get that far.

It won’t be easy though for them against a Glasgow team superbly coached by former Springbok assistant coach Franco Smith and which has momentum following a series of good wins in both the URC and the Challenge Cup.

Glasgow can leapfrog the Bulls and Ulster into third place if they win and the Bulls lose to the Stormers in Pretoria in the plum match being played on South African soil this weekend.

Saturday’s game will be a South African conference decider should the Stormers win – as such a result would put them as much as 15 points clear with just four games to play.

That would effectively be game, set and match to the Stormers within the conference.

By contrast, the Stormers could have their lead whittled down to five points, which would mean the conference race is opened up again.

The Warriors, Benetton and Edinburgh will all have their respective conference ambitions very much on their mind when they play.

Although Glasgow is still catchable in the Scotland/Italy conference, that will become a lot more difficult should the current five-point gap between them and second-placed Benetton become more than that.

And should Glasgow falter against Ulster, Edinburgh can play themselves back into contention by beating Scarlets in Llanelli.

Benetton is visiting Cardiff, where there should be plenty of motivation for the hosts due to the tightness of their conference battle with the Ospreys, who will be going to Limerick to play Munster on Friday night in yet another of several potentially impactful clashes in what should be an absorbing weekend.

Munster have now climbed to sixth and with a tour to South Africa in their future, they need to win as much as the Ospreys do if they hope to capitalise on the momentum they’ve picked up by challenging for a place in the top four, which means home ground advantage in the first play-off game.

This weekend’s URC fixtures

Friday, February 17
Glasgow Warriors v Ulster (Glasgow)
Munster v Ospreys (Limerick)

Saturday, February 18
Lions v Sharks (Johannesburg)
Bulls v Stormers (Pretoria)
Zebre v Connacht (Parma)
Cardiff v Benetton (Cardiff)
Scarlets v Edinburgh (Llanelli)
Leinster v Dragons (Dublin)