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!
URC’s race to the eight: The United Rugby Championship has its fair share of critics, but the jeopardy surrounding its latest play-off race is enchanting. Yes, the 16-team league does have its duds – there are plenty of sides in it that can’t string together a sentence, never mind 80-minute performances week to week – but to have only four points separating fourth to ninth place with three rounds of matches remaining is something to relish. Staggered kick-offs meant that last weekend’s as-it-stands table kept on changing, leaving Munster in ninth spot by the time they kicked off in Italy on Saturday night.
That makes for great sport, and there is also the battle within the battle to savour. Top side Glasgow’s mauling by the Lions has opened back up the race to the treasured No.1 spot that brings home final advantage, and Leinster will be licking their lips knowing they can take advantage next weekend when the Warriors visit second-place Stormers. Bottom line: there are story lines aplenty and that is all you can ask for in a league.
John Dobson identifies the reasons for Stormers’ ‘very disappointing’ defeat to Connacht
Late, late Saints: If you like your rugby to go down to the wire every week, then Phil Dowson’s Northampton are the team for you, as every match they have played since their post-Six Nations return has rivetingly gone down to the wire or close to it. Newcastle at home. Saracens away, Castres at home. Bath away. The result was in the hopper in three of those four games until the final whistle was blown.
Last Saturday brought another episode in this living dangerously series, but unlike the previous week, when the pendulum swung against them at Bath in Europe, their play to the last whistle attitude was royally rewarded at Exeter. The match appeared set for a draw after Paul Bampoe-Brown picked pockets chasing the seemingly lost cause of a penalty touchfinder not going out of play and into Saints’ hands, but the way Fraser Dingwall clattered into 80th minute contact and offloaded to allow Fin Smith to dazzle Immanuel Feyi-Waboso with his twinkle toes and score the winning try was box office. Keep doing what you’re entertainingly doing, Saints!
PREM hitmen: Take a bow, Noah Caluori and Gabriel Hamer-Webb. The only upside to already-on-the-beach teams taking scoreboard poundings is that someone has likely bagged a whole pile of tries, and so it was at the weekend in England with the Saracens and Leicester wingers scoring five tries each. Sale had no excuse for their level of generosity. Caluori had scored five tries when the teams last played, so they should have been on full alert about the threat he posed.
They weren’t and were instead useless trying to prevent 11 and 53-minute run-ins, acrobatic diving finishes on 38 and 57 minutes and also a 49th-minute intercept. There was less variety in Hamer-Webb’s haul against Newcastle – four were simple straight lines of running – but his contribution was no less devastating. Well played, both wingers.
Golden point Chiefs: This Super Rugby Pacific tiebreak gimmick has its detractors, but it proved to be an edge-of-the-seat way to determine a winner in last weekend’s top-of-the-table clash in Hamilton. Previously, the Hurricanes would have been cock a hoop at making it to full-time with the scores level at 17-all after Damian McKenzie missed a late penalty for the Chiefs, instead heading to the exits with an L against them on the ladder after a dramatic four and a half minutes of golden point play.
The Hurricanes seemed to have gotten their defence back in synch after it had been fractured down the outside, but even then, the fates conspired against them when McKenzie’s attempted drop goal winner was deflected by Warner Dearns. This was brilliant play from the Hurricanes back-rower, but the downside was that his touch put everyone onside, and the fast-twitched Wallace Sititi’s leap and swivel on catching to make the line proved decisive. What a finish.
Air miles Connacht: Stuart Lancaster’s Irish side weren’t supposed to go to Cape Town and upset the hosts, but that is what they thrillingly did, producing a three-try show of force in the closing 15 minutes to earn a deserved 33-24 shock win that keeps alive their play-off qualification hopes. Beaten the previous Saturday by Montpellier in France in the Challenge Cup, there were predictions that the Irish club’s follow-up trip to South Africa – one they were undertaking without Bundee Aki – would prove too much for a squad with a limited depth to it.
However, the naysayers were quietened by the quite heartening second-half flourish that resulted in Connacht’s sixth successive URC win. This momentum hasn’t been good enough to get them in the top eight just yet – they remain a point behind the eight-placed Bulls – but their stubbornness to hang in there has set up a juicy fixture next Saturday at the Lions, who are on a five-match winning run. That is definitely a must-see match to ink in your diary.
Ospreys fighting on: With their head on the WRU chopping block and their owners still looking to close a controversial deal to take over Cardiff, it would have been understandable if the closure-threatened Welsh region simply sacked off the season months ago and accepted their dubious fate. However, their reaction amid the crisis has become a lesson in how to stay on task despite the despair.
Mark Jones’ charges have been resolutely competitive in their matches in recent months since the news of their potential demise emerged, and Saturday’s win over the Sharks was their latest reward. Brewery Field in Bridgend is a dated venue that could do with a lick of paint, but what it lacks in facilities, it certainly more than makes up for in atmosphere. Good people are continuing to fight the good fight, and the cheer that accompanied prop Garyn Phillips’ first professional try, when he lurched in under the posts to enhance Ospreys’ second-half lead, was hair-raising. Fair play to them.
Santi time in April: So much of the positive headlines generated by Bath tend to be written about Finn Russell and the sumptuous way he conducts the orchestra that is Johann van Graan’s well-drilled pack. But Saturday was a reminder that it’s not all about the Scotsman on the banks of the River Avon. When news broke that Santi Carreras had been recruited for the 2025/26 season from Gloucester, it smacked of a luxury item buy, given the back-line options already at Van Graan’s disposal.
However, the Argentine has diligently played his way into the set-up, and his start at the weekend at full-back showed he has bags of admirable talent. After the relief of the previous weekend in reaching a first Champions Cup semi-final in 20 years, the intensity could have dropped off at The Rec for a league match against a struggling Harlequins. Carreras’ early play, though, meant this didn’t happen as he gobbled up a fourth-minute intercept on his 22 to score and then literally left four would-be tacklers for dead with a step to add the second on 30 minutes that took his team 19-8 clear. What an excellent signing.
Cardiff’s comeback: The phrase dead and buried applied to the Welsh capital side on Saturday. They may have been ahead at the break at Parc Y Scarlets, but their second-half showing left them 7-24 behind, and things were petering out to what would have been a dispiriting loss. Enter Taine Plumtree. We have been critical before of the Kiwis’ liking for a yellow card, and the binning of the Scarlets back-rower for cynical breakdown play lit the fuse for Cardiff late, late power play.
Plumtree wasn’t alone in watching helplessly from the sidelines as Blair Murray, another Kiwi import who has also become a Welsh international, was carded as well after Cam Winnett tacked on his score to Javan Sebastian’s try. That cut the gap to three points, and the lead was then taken when Sebastian burrowed over a second time with a minute remaining. Three tries in nine minutes – a masterclass in how to manipulate a yellow card scenario.
BROKEN THERMOSTAT!
Munster: Clayton McMillan’s side deserve praise for the unfussy way they went about their business at Benetton in a fixture that was billed as a banana skin despite the home team’s own inconsistent form this season. Munster hadn’t been showing up away from home since a pre-Christmas win at the Ospreys, and their first-half capitulation at Exeter last time out had generated a sour fallout not helped by the grubby headlines generated since their appointment of Roger Randle as assistant coach next season.
Reports of an alleged rape nearly 30 years ago in South Africa when he was a Hurricanes player were reheated in the Irish media, and it left McMillan having to fight on his man’s behalf. The situation has led to some behind-the-scenes committee resignations, and although Saturday’s badly needed victory provided a happier narrative, the Randle story hasn’t gone away. Neither have fears that Munster won’t make the last eight in the URC. Their upcoming home game with Ulster is going to be huge.
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COLD AS ICE!
Uncompetitive PREM: The RFU have got their way, pulling up the ladder on the Championship and ending the possibility for a lower league club to aim for the top flight. The stripping away of the level of funding they had for the Champ several years ago was the beginning of the end for the noble practice that the worst side in the top league is replaced by the best side in the second league.
However, the lack of jeopardy has resulted in the diabolical situation where struggling teams are all too easily giving up the fight when things don’t go their way. Sale, Gloucester, Newcastle and Harlequins conceded 248 points between them at the weekend in what is a terrible look for the supposed competitiveness of the Premiership. In other words, four of the five round 13 matches were a one-sided wipeout and with five rounds of matches still to go, more hidings are on the horizon as the teams at the bottom know their top-flight status isn’t at risk. That will only damage the product.
South African setbacks: The riches invested in the Stormers and Sharks weren’t reflected in the weekend’s results. The Cape Town franchise may still be running second in the URC after the surprise home loss to Connacht, but the defeat should sound the alarm that John Dobson’s squad might not have what it takes to win back the trophy it annexed in 2022.
Yes, there were a club affected by a bereavement but they let themselves down with how they collapsed late on. Ahead 24-14 with 17 minutes remaining, they should have cruised to the win from there. Instead, they lost their way and the energy of their bench wasn’t of the standard needed. But at least they are still in title contention. Sharks’ loss at Ospreys ruled them out of a late run to the top eight. That’s a very poor return on their big bucks investment.
Alex Sanderson: We’ve spoken here before about how the Sale director of rugby is one of the most affable men in the sport. The insight he gives on the ebb and flow of the PREM has been illuminating since he took on the role in January 2021, but he is now encountering the sort of results that are costing his credibility and perhaps his job if the bleed is allowed to continue. It was a terrible look for the Champions Cup’s reputation that a team rinsed 77-7 could still qualify from its pool for the knockout stages.
That definitely wouldn’t have happened under the old format. But Sale’s away-day European embarrassment at Toulouse has now been reprised in the PREM. There can be no hiding place following an 85-19 home loss to Saracens and while Sanderson insisted he still feels he has a handle on the dressing room in Manchester, a hammering like this only belittles its newly launched season ticket push, and all the other marketing drives the rugby club is doing in the football-fascinated city. An intervention is needed.
Moana done: A year can be a very short time in rugby. It was only 11 months ago when the Pasifika franchise, steeled by its signing of Ardie Savea, were grabbing the imagination and a win over the Blues had them dreaming of a first qualification to the end-of-season Super Rugby Pacific play-offs.
That story didn’t end well, as batterings by the Chiefs and the Hurricanes left them finishing in seventh place, five points from the cut-off. That disappointment, though, pales in significance to what is now unfolding just weeks after it emerged that head coach Tana Umaga is joining the All Blacks. It has been decided that Moana will exit Super Rugby after its five-year involvement. It’s another bruising tale about rugby’s financials not cutting it.
Guilty Glasgow: The script that was the Warriors heading to South Africa for a two-match tour ahead of a first-ever Champions Cup semi-final appearance went up in smoke on April 11 when Toulon turned up in Scotland and demonstrated that Scotstoun isn’t the impenetrable fortress it is claimed to be. That elimination was a shock for Franco Smith and co. and they continued to lick their wounds on their trip south of the equator, a response that shouldn’t be tolerated.
Glasgow’s habits have been good across the URC season, so to see them getting savaged 52-12 in Johannesburg doesn’t sit well. Yes, they are top of the log and are still four points clear thanks to the Stormers’ unexpected home defeat. However, the self-pity must now stop and they must get back on message as a fixture in Cape Town is their next assignment.
Lax Bordeaux/Crusaders: It was a sobering weekend for both these giant teams in very different areas of the world. Fresh from their Champions Cup win over Toulouse, UBB came unstuck on the road at La Rochelle and were subjected to a 45-15 defeat that was a reminder that there is still plenty of Top 14 work to be done as they are in fifth place with five matches remaining before the French play-offs.
Also struggling for league consistency are the Crusaders, with their defeat at the Force in Perth leaving them in sixth place have lost more matches than they have won so far in their nine outings. With the seventh-place Waratahs visiting Christchurch on Friday, their margin for further error from the 2025 Super Rugby champs is considerably reduced. They have to start putting it together.
Luke Morgan: We have praised the Ospreys’ fighting spirit above in this column, but one seemingly innocuous collision marred their victory. Sharks’ Ethan Hooker showed his Test-level class when racing away from inside his own half to score under the posts on the stroke of half-time, but what happened after he grounded the ball wasn’t a good look for the sport.
There was no need for the Ospreys winger to dive onto Hooker after he had grounded the ball. It was too late to stop the try from being scored, but Morgan’s impact resulted in Hooker’s shoulder getting dislocated, which will sideline him for quite some time. There was no sanction against the player from referee Mike Adamson, but the incident has been criticised by Sharks’ boss JP Pietersen and online.