The victorious Lions, Sharks, and Stormers made it a Super Saturday for the South African franchises in the United Rugby Championship (URC) this past weekend, but there was a shock defeat for the previously unbeaten Bulls.
After the Bulls suffered heart-breaking 23-22 defeat against the Scarlets in Llanelli on Friday evening, the other three SA teams delivered the desired results on Saturday.
The Lions edged Zebre Parma 10-9 in atrocious weather conditions in Italy, while the Sharks defeated defending champions the Glasgow Warriors 28-24 in Durban.
Later in the day, the Stormers then overcame their ‘bogey’ team with rewarding bonus-point 34-19 victory against Munster in Cape Town – their first win over the previous champions in five attempts.
These results saw the Lions and Bulls finish the round in the top four on the log, while the Stormers and Sharks crept up to 12th and 13th place respectively thanks to their first home wins.
Leinster still top the standings after their fifth successive win on a perfect 25 points, with the Emirates Lions second on 18, with Glasgow third (18) and the Vodacom Bulls fourth (15).
Check out the latest URC log below:
In particular, Stormers coach John Dobson said their victory had given them a sense of “pure relief” after shaky start to the URC season.
““The feeling is pure relief. “This was a really tough week,” Dobson said. “For me, the record against Munster wasn’t a massive thing. If we had another loss, it could’ve done more damage.
“Last year, we felt that pressure after the 0-4 tour. There was a knife to our throat for the whole season. If we had lost tonight, we really would’ve been on the dust road. We have another one to do next week, then I think we will be in a really good spot.
“I don’t think either team was brilliant. Munster are a really good team and a much tougher team than we sometimes realise. I don’t think we were compelling. There were some obvious things, we had the top lineout before tonight, but we lost five or six. We gave away too many penalties in the middle of the field to give Munster easy entries into our 22.
“Where I think we were absolutely magnificent was defensively. It’s a really good attacking team. They needed us to give away penalties to get any entries. So I thought this was a very good defensive effort. We were a team fighting for a win.”
What was your highlight from the weekend?
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