It’s time for our Monday wrap of who has their name in lights and who is making the headlines for all the wrong reasons after the weekend.
THEY’RE ON FIRE!
Wayne Pivac: Fans of the PRO12 (now the United Rugby Championship) should be very excited that the Kiwi will be back in the tournament next season, taking charge of Italian outfit Benetton on a two-year deal. His career since leading Wales to the 2021 Six Nations title has been underwhelming. After getting shafted by the Welsh the following year, Japan wasn’t a happy hunting ground for him, and he had been idle since exiting the NEC Green Rockets last May.
But now comes the chance for him to knuckle down back in the league that he electrified with his title-winning Scarlets in 2016/17. No one can deny that the attacking rugby played by the Llanelli outfit was lovely, and they were a serious top-level team with him at the helm, a status that the blazers in Treviso are hoping they can aspire to. The Italians were a promising outfit under Kieran Crowley, winning the 2021 Rainbow Cup and narrowly losing a 2019 PRO14 quarter-final at Munster, but they have lost their way despite the wealth of local talent at their disposal. Pivac is well capable of reigniting them.
Ospreys and Cardiff: It’s fair to say the mood in Welsh rugby remains mutinous, with the WRU still hellbent on putting one of its four pro club teams out of business despite the avalanche of criticism it has received. Kudos then to Ospreys and Cardiff – the two URC clubs at the heart of the latest storm – for sidelining the distraction and producing hard-earned wins. It’s an awful situation for Ospreys, knowing they are in the firing line if their owners, Y11 Sport & Media, complete their takeover of Cardiff, having been chosen by the WRU as their preferred bid.
It would be understandable if players threw their heads and the rugby went to pot, but there was an admirable togetherness about them in the way they fought back to upset Ulster in Bridgend on Saturday night. A hat tip as well to Cardiff for their effort the previous night in bringing to an end Leinster’s 11-match winning run. For all the doom and gloom about the sport in Wales, these wins for Ospreys and Cardiff nourished the soul.
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Bulls and Lions: Curious how it can all turn around so quickly in South Africa. Johan Ackermann started badly as the Bulls boss, and a seven-match losing streak has some fans believing he wouldn’t make it through to the end of his first season in charge at Loftus. However, thanks to the help provided by some of Rassie Erasmus’ Springboks assistants, there has been a considerable uplift in their fortunes and Saturday’s 41-12 drubbing of the Sharks was their fourth win on the bounce.
With three home league matches on the March horizon, there is every chance now that they can go to Glasgow at the start of April and be in with a genuine shot of winning that Investec Champions Cup Round of 16 match. It was January 31 when the Bulls humiliated the Lions 52-17 at Ellis Park, but Ivan van Rooyen deserves a shoutout for coordinating his team’s vibrant response. Saturday’s upset of the Stormers was their latest top result. Of course, it helps when you have Morne van den Berg creating tries for fun, but the level of their rebound has made them live URC play-off contenders.
Crusaders: We gave Rob Penney’s side a kicking last week in the Cold As Ice! section following their second Super Rugby Pacific loss on the bounce, so it is only right that we acknowledge the commendable nature of the riposte they posted at the Chiefs, eventually winning 43-33. They looked in grave danger when falling 14-0 behind with the concession of two tries in the opening eight minutes, and they also trailed 21-7 after 22 minutes, but their golden hour response, full of flicks and tricks, was a sharp reminder that these Crusaders won’t be giving up their title easily.
A shout-out is also warranted for the Force and the Drua. They, too, were also dumped into last week’s Cold As Ice! after both were left winless two rounds into the new season, suggesting they might not have what it takes to improve on last year’s respective ninth and 11th and last spots on the table. They’re currently in ninth and 10th places, but with a way more optimistic outlook for the road ahead following their respective wins over Moana and the Hurricanes.
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Ronan O’Gara: The Irish legend deserves a pat on the back for getting his struggling La Rochelle team back on track after a damaging five-game losing streak. Their Champions Cup hopes had gone up in smoke last month, a home defeat to Harlequins following a gallant effort at Leinster leaving them crumpled on the canvas and counted out, while their inconsistent league form continued unchecked, with dispiriting losses to Clermont, Lyon and Montpellier leaving them in danger of getting trailed off in the hunt for a Top 14 play-off spot.
Castres had gone to La Rochelle and won at the end of November, but a sweet revenge was enacted by O’Gara and co. as they held on to win 31-26 after leading 14-6 at the break through scores from Jack Nowell and a penalty try and then 28-12 on 54 minutes following a couple of more tries. The win has lifted them to 10th on the table, just eight points off Stade Francais in the sixth and final play-off spot, and it will be interesting to see if they can now build on this fillip when hosting second-place Pau on March 21.
Rassie Erasmus: It’s quite the luxury for the Springboks boss that at a time when Rugby Championship rivals New Zealand and Australia are busy with their club sides in the early weeks of their Super Rugby campaigns, he can bring together an extended home-based squad in Cape Town for an alignment camp even though their franchises are busy with URC games.
His start-of-year selection of 49 included 11 uncapped players, highlighting how his squad very much remains fluid with build-up continuing to next year’s attempt at winning an unprecedented third Rugby World Cup in succession. When it came to matches in both 2024 and 2025, Erasmus used 50 players each year, so casting a wide net domestically is something he enjoys doing and he had had no qualms about including several of Kevin Foote’s Junior Boks squad for this senior team gathering. With his plan also to include a virtual meeting with 21 overseas-based players in the coming weeks, the 2026 Springbok season is very much up and running with months still to go before their opening match.
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COLD AS ICE!
Stormers and Sharks: What’s happening on the coast in South Africa at the moment? Both teams are playing as if they are on the beach and the season is already over. The Cape Town franchise started with a 10-match winning run, but they still haven’t recovered from the hammering their second string took at Harlequins in the Champions Cup. They were all over the shop for an age before defeating Leicester, and three URC games have now been lost on the bounce, seeing them dropping like a stone from first to fifth. Yes, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu is experiencing a dip in form after his stellar 2025, but in no way are we pinning his team’s problems solely on him. They were collectively bereft of ideas in their humbling at the Lions, and the March 14 trip to the Bulls won’t be for the faint-hearted.
Moving up the coast to Durban, the dead cat bounce enjoyed by JP Pietersen following his initial appointment as boss has given way in recent weekends to the same old failings endured under John Plumtree. If you felt they were bad at the Lions, they were way worse at the Bulls despite the radiant form of Andre Esterhuizen. He has been their only beacon of light, and there should be a slew of teammates at Kings Park queuing up to apologise for not reciprocating the quality he has delivered.
Shape of the Game: It was about time that last week’s Shape of the Game conference in London finally put a stop to the gallop of the drunk on power leadership of World Rugby chairman Brett Robinson, with the decision reached to stop messing with the laws for now save for the four global trials currently in operation. Ever since the Australian doctor won the leadership contest in November 2024, the southern hemisphere’s attention-grabbing tinkering has been relentless. It’s a development hard to stomach. Robinson’s own Australia is a brutal example of how to mismanage the sport on and off the pitch, given how they have fallen way behind the pace in the last 15 to 20 years.
Rugby union can’t continue to exist as rugby union if the influence of integral features such as scrum and lineout continue to be eroded. It’s already a brutal look that crooked lineouts are lately ruled as play on if the opposition team doesn’t jump – it’s allowing less skilled throwers to get away with being inaccurate. That’s just daft. Another downside in this southern determination to speed up the game was seen at the weekend where some hasty decisions in the Reds-Highlanders game reportedly resulted in inaccuracies. Maybe it’s time for Robinson and his ilk to pop along to the NRL and leave union alone.
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Ulster: We’ve always had a soft spot for Richie Murphy. Upskilling players is a trademark of his coaching, and the recent form that has taken Stuart McCloskey and Robert Baloucoune in the starting Ireland backline. He also isn’t afraid to have his say in the media, and he was candid post-game on Saturday in Wales when alleging that “rugby’s in trouble if cleanouts like that near the goal-line end up the way they are”. He was speaking about the decision of the unconvincing referee, Fillipo Russo, to disallow a late Ulster try and instead yellow card Marcus Rea following a lengthy TMO review.
It’s good to have debate in the open about these types of game-defining decisions, rather than have the coach shut up for fear of disciplinary retribution. The thing was, Murphy’s Ulster team should not have been left bemoaning this late-game decision and should instead have been comfortably ahead of the Ospreys. It’s an old habit of Ulster, losing matches when they are most expected to win, and it’s something Murphy’s promising stewardship hasn’t quite eradicated.
Changing of the Bok guard: Time waits for no player, no matter how stellar their career has been in the game, and Vincent Koch, Bongi Mbonambi and Willie le Roux now know the clock is ticking for them following their exclusion from this week’s Springbok alignment camp in Cape Town. Head coach Erasmus has stated that not getting an invitation to this type of gathering won’t mean a player can’t go on to play for South Africa in 2026, but it isn’t a vote of confidence either when a trio with a combined tally of 245 caps can’t get into a squad of 49.
It certainly does feel like the changing of the guard. The 63-cap Koch will turn 36 years of age this month. Mbonambi, who has 81 caps, turned 35 in January while the 101-cap Le Roux will be 37 at his next birthday in August, so it would be a big ask for them age-wise to still be at the top of their game when Rugby World Cup 2027 happens. That’s why Erasmus is assessing his other options now. We won’t write off the trio just yet – they are still fabulous players capable of getting a recall – but the indication is their time may have finally passed.
Anti player welfare: So the fixtures are finally set in stone for rugby new-fangled Nations Championship, but with its confirmation comes the dreaded realisation that all this chat over the years about player welfare is essentially poppycock. It boggles the mind that England will play in South Africa on July 4, fly back to Liverpool to face Fiji on July 11 in what is a Fijian ‘home’ match and then fly to Argentina to play on July 18.
It’s the sort of schedule where Steve Borthwick would essentially have to have two teams, sending one to the southern hemisphere to play two matches and keep another at home for the in-between matches, if England are to be at their best and not flog the players with air miles. Borthwick could even do with splitting up his coaches to get the best prepared. It’s similar for Ireland – an opener in Australia, a second game back in Japan and then onto the third in New Zealand – and other northern hemisphere teams. In simple terms, a tournament designed to showcase the best of rugby won’t be the best in July due to the crazy travel logistics.
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