Africa-Press – South-Africa. The Bulls confirmed their place inside the United Rugby Championship (URC) top eight and a quarter-final place with their wondrous 78-12 win over Zebre Parma at Ellis Park on Saturday.
The men from Pretoria boosted their points difference with their 11-tries-to-two rout of the Italians in Johannesburg.
It means Jake White’s men, who are currently in seventh on the URC standings, can climb as high as fifth going into the final round-robin games should they get a bonus-point win over Leinster at Loftus next weekend, provided Munster (5th) and Connacht (6th) slip up in their games against the Sharks and Glasgow Warriors, respectively.
But the Bulls director of rugby can breathe a sigh of relief after they ended their URC winless run that stretched back to January, meaning his team cannot drop out of the top eight and confirmed their place in next year’s Champions Cup in the process.
However, a higher-placed finish won’t change the fact that they will play their knockout games on the road starting in the last eight.
Unless there are some major shocks en route to the grand final, where the Bulls lost to the Stormers in the Mother City last year, they will likely be on the road, still, the further they progress.
The defending URC champions, the Stormers, have it all to do in their final league-stage match with Benetton Treviso in Cape Town on Friday night (18:30).
Defeat to Munster 26-24 at home on Saturday dropped John Dobson’s men to third on the URC ladder behind Ulster (64), who hold a single-point advantage going into their last match against Edinburgh at home.
Ulster, who kick off at 20:35 (SA time) on Friday, will also have the benefit of knowing exactly what their equation entails by the time they face the Scots at the Kingspan Stadium.
Should Ulster and the Stormers be tied on points at the end of the matches, competition rules dictate that the most number of wins will determine the second-place finisher.
From there, if the teams are still square, then the team with the biggest points difference (points scored and against) will claim the second spot. If still unresolved, the number of tries scored and then the number of points scored will end the stalemate.
The Stormers have won 11 matches, hold a 124 points difference and have scored 63 tries, numbers that are all inferior to Ulster’s 12 wins, 162 points difference and 72 tries scored.
Although the Stormers cannot finish lower than fourth, meaning they’ve secured a home quarter-final at the very least, a second-place finish guarantees a home semi-final, should they get there.
Last year, their countrymen, the Bulls, did them a major favour by knocking out log leaders Leinster in Dublin in the semi-finals, which gifted the then-second-positioned Stormers a home final that they grabbed with both hands.
Interestingly, the Stormers and Bulls could have a rematch in the quarter-finals should they get second and seventh on the log, respectively, a tantalising prospect that seemed well on the cards before Saturday’s results.
The Sharks will also keep the URC rulebook handy ahead of their tussle with Munster at Kings Park (18:15) as they try to cling onto eighth place on the table but need just a point from their next game against Munster to be safe inside the top eight.
Seeing off Italians Benetton went a long way towards retaining their Champions Cup status and getting a top-eight URC finish, which also grants them a playoff spot.
The Sharks (46) could also leapfrog the Bulls (48) into seventh, if results don’t go the latter’s way at Loftus against Leinster.
Neil Powell’s charges have a comfortable five-point lead on Benetton, who have to go to Cape Town to face a seething Stormers team that let second place slip following their loss to Munster.
It will be the second time Munster visits Durban this month after getting destroyed 50-35 in the Champions Cup there two weeks ago. But Munster looked like a different team at the Cape Town Stadium, where they became the first visitors to win there since the Lions in December 2021.
The reward for finishing eighth will be a flight to Dublin to face unbeaten Leinster.
All quarter-final matches are scheduled to be played on the weekend of Saturday, 6 May.
The Lions, meanwhile, missed out on a first-ever URC top eight finish after their loss to Leinster at home on Saturday.
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