Rugby.Connacht.Pink

With all the Grand Slam silliness out of the way, we now have to refocus on how to climb another few places up the URC table, secure some end of season knockout rugby and hopefully welcome Santi Cordero to the Sportsground with some Champions Cup fare next season.
We can now be cautiously optimistic about a playoff spot, but home wins are essential, starting this weekend. Edinburgh won’t overhaul us if they win, but next week’s Challenge Cup opponents are waiting to pounce if they take care of their fellow Lions before we kick off.
In terms of grabbing a Champions Cup spot, Bulls now look marginally easier to catch than Sharks, with Ulster and Leinster still to play and only a four point lead on the table, but a win for Scarlets over Sharks will be very welcome if we get the business done against Edinburgh.
Of course, Connacht might need to get ahead of both of them to protect against the eventuality of a team below us winning the Challenge Cup and leapfrogging us for the last spot, but that might be a big ask. Scarlets are the most likely URC team to pull off that feat, with home games all the way to Dublin, so that is another reason to hope they beat Sharks and maybe sneak in as the best Welsh team.
A Zebre win over Cardiff would be a good start and at the time of going to press, is looking less ridiculous than twenty minutes ago, though the odds favour another addition to the Parmesan LBP collection.

But other than our own game, the key game is probably in Ravenhill, where the bookies have Ulster favourites to overcome the Bulls, which might leave the European door open. But first to take care of the Gunners. They have some internationals back, while we are still waiting for ours, so it might not be easy. Memories of the trip there twelve months ago are still traumatic …

Favoured results:
Zebre v Cardiff
Leinster v Stormers
Benetton v Lions
Ospreys v Dragons
Connacht v Edinburgh
Scarlets v Sharks
Munster v Glasgow
Ulster v Bulls

Another try-fest at the Sportsground was most welcome and congrats to Jack on taking over the record, but in other venues the results were a bit of a mixed bag.

Edinburgh, Benetton and Zebre all had half-time leads that would have done our European ambitions no harm, but all let them slip. Munster and Sharks are edging towards safety.

Were Connacht to manage to win all the remaining games, we could still catch Munster if they lost their last two on the road in South Africa. And even though we only need one more win than Sharks, their games in hand mean they would need to lose at least three even if we keep winning. Ideally they lose two of the next six, as in their end of season clash with Munster, at least they can’t both win …

A defeat at home to Stormers this weekend would be a good start.

Of course all of this pre-supposes that the qualification system remains the same as last time out, which doesn’t seem to have been officially confirmed anywhere, but it seems reasonably safe to assume.

The flipside is that in terms of just getting into the URC play-offs, the three teams immediately ahead of us lost, and we may even be in a position to move into eighth spot after the next full round of games in three weeks if it goes to plan.

The Ospreys win keeps them breathing down our necks, while Zebre’s performance shows they can’t be written off at home. Scarlets, despite their big win, probably haven’t got enough season left.

After the bizarre conclusion to the European Pool stage, where, having initially seeming not to have put teams away by sufficient margins to get a favourable draw in this oddball format, Connacht were successively handed four gifts from their opponents, leaving them a gilt-edged opportunity for a triptych of lucrative home games followed by a day out in Dublin, which they promptly blew, it is that time of year when we refocus on the URC and try to figure what exactly it is that Connacht need to do to get into the play-offs, and indeed the Champions Cup.
The Champions Cup qualification is of course complicated by the requirement to have a team from each “Shield”, which means we probably need to get to seventh as opposed to eighth to qualify, though of course eighth is still good enough for another day out in the capital, if not exactly the one we seek.

To simplify matters, let’s get rid of the top five teams, who are probably already in (I may be being generous to Glasgow but they have a game in hand), the bottom two, who have no hope, and Cardiff, who should get the guaranteed Welsh spot. That leaves us with the below, and if you have been doing your subtraction, that means there are two teams from this table that will progress.
On the face of it, this looks like bad news as the table still contains Munster and Sharks.

So to get through, Connacht need to stay ahead of who they’re ahead of, overhaul Treviso, and try to sneak past one of Munster or Sharks.
Edinburgh still have to play Leinster and Ulster, plus we can take a few points off them ourselves, so they shouldn’t be a problem as long as we keep up our end of the deal (which as always of course is the tricky part). Likewise Lions, who we have a chance to impact directly this weekend and who also travel to Bulls and host Leinster. Ospreys have a nice run in with Benetton, Dragons and Cardiff all at home after the trip to Parma, so they will be chomping at the heels at best, and will play leapfrog if our lot slip up in any of the forthcoming quintet of very winnable but eminently loseable fixtures. Scarlets have probably run out of road but can’t be quite written off yet after a bonus point win over Bulls.
Benetton have tough run in with four away games including finishing up in South Africa, so they should drop down from their perch atop the “table”.
Which leaves the Big Two. While we’ve been focused on trying to catch a previously misfiring Munster, at this point it might well be that Sharks are more vulnerable, despite the two games in hand. They have to play Stormers home and away, plus travel to Lions and Scarlets, after the imminent visit to the Murrayfield Car Park, and their last game of the season is a rerun of their Champions Cup Last Sixteen tie with Munster, which may also decide next season’s European fate (if Connacht do their job right). Munster themselves have a few losable games, not least the trip South, which also includes Stormers, but we may even need favours from them at home to keep Scarlets and Ospreys at bay.
So the best we can do is hope both of them keep dropping points to keep the door ajar, starting now, where we will permit both Benetton and Edinburgh to pick up some points just this once in order to keep the bigger fish within striking distance.

In terms of getting in the top eight, and getting the rosary beads out for the bus to Dublin, we could of course afford to finish behind both Sharks and Munster, as long as we get ahead of Cardiff, who we have a chance to overhaul this weekend, and who have yet to come visit us.
So home wins are the order of the day this weekend. If all six come in, we have a shout!

But any slip up at our own end and it could all look very ominous very fast …

Last night I ate a whole wedge of Emmental and washed it down with a half litre of Absinthe in the hope that I might get inside the minds of the EPCR intelligentsia as they, holed up in their Alpine redoubt, plot their latest dastardly scheme to confuse the bejaysus out of the European Rugby community.
I woke up in a cold sweat with an irrational fear of cuckoo clocks, unrealistic expectations of train punctuality, and the complete Challenge Cup pool draw fresh in my otherwise fuzzy brain.
Previous notions of a two-tier structure, were, I now realise, a product of excessive sobriety. The EPCR like a four tier system, and four tiers is what we’ll get, and here’s how they’ll do it.
First you just need to lump the Cheetahs in with the English teams to balance up the numbers. Then you create Tiers One and Four in the same way as the Champions Cup, with two teams from each league, the top two in Tier One and the bottom two in Tier Four. You are then left with eight teams, which go into Tiers Two and Three. These tiers have less teams but that doesn’t matter as Tier One teams only play Tier Four and Tier Two only play Tier Three. Tiers Two and Three will each have two URC teams but only one from England and France.

So it looks like this:

Tier 1: Glasgow, Scarlets, Wasps, Bristol, Toulon, Pau
Tier 2: Connacht, Lions, Worcester, Stade Francais
Tier 3: Benetton, Cardiff, Newcastle, Brive
Tier 4: Dragons, Zebre, Bath, Cheetahs, Bayonne, Perpignan/Mont-de-Marsan

The upshot of it all is that, while a draw will be required to split the teams into two Pools, which will determine which Tier One teams play which Tier Four teams, the Tier Two and Three games can only go one way. Since you can’t play a team from your own league, Connacht will have to play Brive and Newcastle. Lions will play the same two teams, while Worcester and Stade Francais will each play Benetton and Cardiff.
If that doesn’t make sense, then you’re too sober and rational.
On the one hand, part of me hopes this is wrong, as I would prefer to go to Bath and Bayonne. On the other hand, we’ve had good craic in Brive and Newcastle, and the last time we played them both, we won the league. So maybe it will all work out for the best.

One couldn’t help having a bit of a chuckle when EPCR announced gravely that there were no free weekends to reschedule pandemic-affected games. It was like going back in time eighteen months. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from Covid is that nothing can be set in stone any more and flexibility is key. So panic-cancelling games and awarding arbitrary scorelines as if the match had really taken place on a Tuesday afternoon and consisted of four penalty tries is bound to rub a few people up the wrong way.
A sensible approach would have been to delay any adjudication of results until after Round Three, allowing a better assessment of the situation. If there were only a small number of cancellations, and one team clearly caused each of them, by all means award the points then and give everyone a bit of certainty going into the final round, but if there are so many games called off as to make the pool stage a bit of a lottery, then reschedule to a contingency weekend instead.
Of course sense is not really in abundance when it comes to EPCR, which is not really a massive surprise considering every rule change has to be negotiated between representatives of three different leagues, all with different priorities, so we are, as the saying goes, where we are, although the precise location of where it is that we are has yet to be revealed.
The future format of the tournament depends a lot on how badly affected the remaining two rounds are. If they go ahead more or less unscathed, which seems optimistic, then we only need to find one spare weekend. Each of the leagues has at least one weekend free during the Six Nations, despite numerous media claims to the contrary, so it would be possible to postpone a round of league action on the last weekend of January and reschedule the games to there, but it’s probably more likely that the two-legged round of sixteen will be cut to one round (or indeed dropped altogether if further postponements are required). Personally I find the idea of two-legged rugby games a bit silly anyway.
All of that attaches extra importance to finishing in the top four places in the pool to secure a home tie in the round of sixteen or indeed direct access to a quarter-final, depending on how it all pans out. So can Connacht achieve that? Perhaps, but it will require some points and some favours. At this stage I am perhaps arrogantly assuming that a top eight finish is already highly likely. While it’s too early to count chickens, with six points in the bag after two games and so many winless teams (admittedly many with games in hand), Connacht are already odds-on to keep ahead of four teams and progress. The question is, can we stay ahead of eight?
To get a home tie (if indeed that transpires to be the rule), it pretty much goes without saying that we need to win the remaining two games, and that is achievable based on the first two rounds. But we also need no more than three teams to go undefeated. Currently there are five who haven’t lost a game, but Leicester’s fate is in Connacht’s own hands so that leaves four: Harlequins, Munster, Toulouse and Bristol. Connacht would need just one of those four to lose to have a chance of a top-four spot. After that it comes down to bonus points and points difference. Munster would be favourites to win both their games, but they made hard work of Castres in Thomond, so might not have it all their own way in France. Likewise Quins have to take a trip to Cardiff, who may be out to prove a point and, assuming their current Covid issues have passed by then, may have a full deck to deal from for the first time in a while. Both those games are scheduled for Friday night in Round Three, and may set the tone for Connacht’s weekend. Toulouse haven’t been tested properly yet, but already look set fair for a clean sweep, but Bristol have yet to lace up a boot and could easily slip-up in Paris or Llanelli. And of course, the elephant in the room is that any of these teams could end up forfeiting a game along the way, but we wouldn’t want to get through that way now, would we?
So a top-four finish is not beyond the realms of possibility. The big question is, can everyone get the players on the pitch to make it happen?

Fresh on the heels of Connacht’s season coming to an end, everyone else (bar Benetton) had theirs prematurely truncated as well, with a selection of dead rubbers now on offer for the weekend. Only the Sharks can upset the table order by thrashing the Bulls at home.

With only academic interest in the Rainbow Cup for Connacht fans, attention turns to England and France, where our potential opponents for next season’s Champions Cup are being decided.

EPCR have yet to announce the format, but they have confirmed that 24 teams will participate and the assumption seems to be that the ostensibly temporary format adopted for this season will persist. If all the same rules stay in place, Connacht, as a Tier 2 side, i.e. one that finished third or fourth, will play one of the Tier 3 sides from each of England and France.

For the Premiership, that translates to the team in fifth, certain to be Northampton, and sixth, which in theory could be Bath, but will almost certainly be the winner of the final day clash between Wasps and Leicester. So no-one Connacht haven’t played recently, but there’s a chance that we might get to witness a trip to Welford Road in person. The bookies have Wasps as 3 point favourites so that one might be worth a watch at 3pm on Saturday.

Across La Manche, after last weekends end-of-regular-season drama that saw Toulon condemned to the Challenge Cup, the Barrages provide the weekend drama, with Connacht due to face one or other of the losing sides. For a while it looked like a trip to Castres could be a possibility after their comeback bonus-point win against Toulon, but three second half penalties from Stade Francais in the Basque Country saw Castres drop to seventh, putting them in the path of either Leinster or Munster.

As it stands the Barrages will see Racing at home to Stade in the Friday night derby, while Clermont, who beat La Rochelle while allowing them to hold on to the losing bonus they needed for second place, make the trip to Bordeaux the following night. Both games are live on Freesports, as Premier Sports have recently acquired the UK and Ireland rights to the Top 14 after a long absence from our screens.

Racing are firm favourites over their rivals, and the Stade Jean Bouin would certainly be my preferred destination if we are Paris bound, despite our near heroics in La Defense on All-Ireland Sunday last December.

On Saturday, Bordeaux are five point favourites to prevail at home to Clermont. While the intrepid adventurers amongst us will fancy the trip to the Auvergne, our proven ability to win in the faded splendour of the Stade Chaban-Delmas might have some of us shouting for the Yellow Army. Neither will be easy opponents though, so for a chance to progress, we’ll probably be hoping for the Parisian ball to come out of the hat when the time comes.

Of course, this all comes with the caveat that the competition might follow a new format, but assuming what I have assumed, a brief summary of our potential opponents is:

Northampton or the winner of Wasps v Leicester

and

One of the losers of Racing v Stade Francais or Bordeaux v Clermont

Enjoy the drama …