The Bulls will bury Benetton at Loftus in the United Rugby Championship quarterfinal. Ireland’s Leinster will win at home against Ulster. It sets up the match of the tournament a week later, when Leinster travel to Pretoria.
The Springboks host Ireland at Loftus in the first of a two-Test series. Ireland have not toured South Africa since 2016, when they won a Test for the first time against the Springboks in South Africa.
Ireland were 13-8 winners against the Springboks in the 2023 World Cup pool match in Paris, France. In 2022, they beat the Boks 19-16 in Dublin. It is the only two times the two sides have met since Rassie Erasmus’s involvement with the Boks in 2018.
The Boks, in this six-year period, have won successive World Cup titles. Ireland has lost two successive World Cup quarterfinals to the All Blacks.
Both teams will have one eye on Pretoria, even if they don’t publicly say so, but both are too good to lose at home in the quarter-finals.
The Boks and Ireland, in those six years, have both enjoyed being the top-ranked international team in rugby’s global rankings. Right now the world champion Boks are one and Ireland, winners of the most recent Six Nations, are No 2.
For an opening international Test season salvo, it does not get bigger.
That is for the first weekend of July, but next weekend’s probable Leinster visit to Pretoria is significant to that opening Test in July.
Leinster, losing finalists against Toulouse in the coveted Champions Cup, fielded 18 current Irish internationals in their match 23. The Bulls have three current Springboks in their match-day squad and winger Kurt-Lee Arendse was the only starter in the Boks World Cup final 12-11 win against the All Blacks.
This semifinal will be a Test-match occasion. Leinster, having lost three successive finals in the Champions Cup, have also lost two successive URC home semifinals, the first of which was to the Bulls.
Both teams will have one eye on Pretoria, even if they don’t publicly say so, but both are too good to lose at home in the quarterfinals.
Leinster has prioritised the Champions Cup in the past three seasons and South Africa’s two strongest teams, the Bulls and Stormers, have made the URC the title they chase.
The Stormers, away to Glasgow in the quarterfinals, won the title in the first season and were beaten finalists in the second season, losing 19-14 to Ireland’s Munster.
If the Stormers can create more history in winning an away play-off match in their first attempt, and Munster, at Thomond Park in Limerick, win their quarterfinal, then it sets up the most appetising of semifinals in the best two Irish provincial teams against the best two South African URC teams.
What a precursor to the South Africa versus Ireland two-Test series.
Benetton, a month ago, scored five tries against the Bulls in Pretoria in a league match for 35 points. The Bulls scored 56 points.
It will be a similar points differential in the quarter final but I don’t expect the cumulative score to be 91 points. This is a play-off.
The Stormers, having lost to Glasgow 20-9 earlier in the league, are good enough to win, despite missing the likes of Damian Willemse, who is injured.
Discipline will be the key to the Stormers and consistency in approach. They know how to win play-offs, having won five from six in the URC and one from two in the Champions Cup. Those were all in Cape Town, where they boast an 88 percent win record.
The Stormers, away from home, statistically are half the team they are at home, with a 44 percent win record, which has been enhanced this season because of wins in Newport and Galway.
Those two wins, on their most recent league tour, were important and it showed they can win without local support in the stands.
Selfishly, this weekend I want a Bulls and Leinster win because a week later they will do battle in South Africa and I want a Stormers and Munster win as a repeat of last season's final, even though it will be in Munster this time.
It is this kind of South African and Irish connection in rugby that is getting stronger. Shades of green on all fronts that gives South Africa a rugby rivalry second only to the Springboks playing the All Blacks.
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