State of the URC: Stormers sitting pretty but Bulls, Sharks, Lions have plenty to do

Almost 100,000 fans went to stadiums to watch the United Rugby Championship’s round-eight action over the Christmas weekend as two derbies in Ireland, two in Wales, and one in Scotland caught the imagination.

South Africa’s players were on holiday, with several posting pics of family time. André "The Giant" Esterhuizen frolicking in the waves at a Durban beach with his tiny daughter was special.

But it is back to the grindstone this week as the Sharks prepare to host the Lions on Saturday at 3.30 pm before the Stormers take on the Bulls in Cape Town in the late game (6 pm).

Fortunately for the SA teams, the five games played north of the equator have not changed the 16-team log too much and, of course, the SA teams have a game in hand — their matches originally scheduled for Boxing Day have been postponed to February.

This weekend, there is a full round of matches, and although the four SA teams are playing each other, it is the same once more in the north, where there is a second round of local derbies.

We take a look at how the South African teams are positioned ahead of the weekend’s matches in Durban and Cape Town.

Stormers

John Dobson’s team were done a favour by Leinster, who beat Munster at Thomond Park in a tense 13-8 struggle. That prevented the men in red from going ahead of the Stormers at the top of the table. The Stormers are unbeaten, with seven wins from seven and 32 points, plus they have a game in hand on Munster and Cardiff (both 30 points).

The old cliché that the mark of a good team is that they win even when they are not at their best holds for the Stormers’ 34-27 defeat of the Lions. Game management let them down when they struggled to close out the game. This should be remedied this week with the return of two superstar generals in Damian Willemse and Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu.

Bulls

The Bulls started the season playing iffy rugby but managing to win, but lately they have fallen away and lost five in a row (including Champions Cup matches). They are 10th on the URC points table with three wins from seven. The big issue with the Bulls is their porous defence. While they are scoring well (26 tries in their seven games), they are leaking an average of five tries per game.

The Bulls’ last game was in Durban, where they lost 21-12 despite having most of their Springboks back in the fold. The fallout from their loss has been spectacular. Talk about pushing the panic button! Two assistant coaches were fired (Andries Bekker and Chris Rossouw), and an SOS was sent to SA Rugby for emergency coaching aid.

One wonders how they will react if they lose a sixth game in a row on Saturday…

Lions

Maybe it was a hangover from losing a Currie Cup final in the last minute at Ellis Park for the second year in a row, but the Joburgers had a shocking start to the season, losing all three of their tour games (against Cardiff, Zebre, and Benetton).

Fans were calling for the head of Ivan van Rooyen, only for the Lions to turn their form around with a spurt of three successive wins, including two big scalps in Ulster (at Ellis Park) and the Bulls (at Loftus).

Now it is back to three losses in a row — they have lost at home to Benetton, away to Newcastle, and away to the Stormers.

But the Lions returned home from the latter game with their heads held high, and they will be confident they can knock off the Sharks this week and consolidate their healthy 8th place on the log.

Sharks

A position of 13th out of 16 after seven matches is hardly the position the Sharks envisaged they would be in as the tournament neared the halfway mark, but that is their reality after an embarrassing two wins, one draw, and four losses.

Even though John Plumtree was without most of his Springbok firepower, the powers-that-be effectively sacked the Kiwi in a move that was not thought through, and was more to assuage hysterical fans. Still, the Sharks do seem to have a new lease of life under JP Pietersen, although to be fair to Plumtree, he probably would also have started winning with the first-choice players back and correctly focused.

Pietersen began with a hard-fought win over Saracens, and then overcame the Bulls with a tenacious display.

The Sharks still have a mountain to climb to break into the coveted top eight, and to that end, beating the Lions at Kings Park this weekend is non-negotiable.