Will Leinster tour South Africa with backup players?Via
URC Spotlight: Leinster is proceeding to South Africa subsequent to accomplishing their goal of making it to the Champions Cup final four.
As attention turns to the United Rugby Championship, Leinster defeated their quarterfinal opponent, Stade Rochelais, 40–13.
The Stormers will play the Lions in South Africa before Leinster visits, and it will be interesting to see which team they send.
When you count the last two Champions Cup knockout games, Leinster’s first-choice players have played in three straight games during the Easter weekend top-of-the-log URC matchup versus the Bulls.
Playing against the first-ever URC champions, Leinster’s Champions Cup semifinal matchup with the Northampton Saints is scheduled to take place just one week after the Stormers’ trip to Cape Town, so it is possible that player management will be a factor.
There is no denying Leinster’s strength when playing at their peak, as demonstrated by their victory against La Rochelle, and they continue to improve with every game
It’s possible that John Dobson’s team escaped with their lives when Manie Libbok missed the opportunity to win the Round of 16 match, since the Stormers would have been missing up to six key players if they had traveled to Dublin this past weekend instead of La Rochelle.
In the early May semifinals, the Saints, the league leaders, will be the underdogs despite their convincing victory over the Bulls, who came to Franklin Gardens with diminished strength.
The same goes for Harlequins, who caused a major upset in the quarterfinal round by winning an incredibly captivating and thrilling game in Bordeaux by just one point.
Well, the quarterfinals did show the South African rugby public what’s in store if the local teams advance to a home play-off, even though there were some significant victories for the favorites.
People who have been to Toulouse typically comment on the frightening and boisterous crowd. There was an abundance of color and brightness in Bordeaux, Dublin, and even Northampton.
When South African Rugby becomes a full shareholder next season, the present arrangement that restricts the competition to play solely in Europe from the semifinal round will end, and perhaps this will provide the incentive for the South African clubs to focus more on the Cup competition.
At this stage of the Champions Cup, when the quarterfinal round venues are determined by the games played the week prior, the travel factor’s potential to weaken their URC challenge now acts as a deterrent to South African teams giving it their all
It looks like the Bulls are adjusting to the pressure of playing in two tournaments, but they still have to respond to inquiries about why they fielded a team below strength against Northampton. French teams frequently play with reduced strength when they travel, as illustrated here.
In their Champions Cup play-off matchup against Toulouse, Harlequins will be the underdogs, but they won’t go into the match with zero confidence because nobody thought they could defeat Bordeaux.
Even though Leinster is the only URC club still playing in the Champions Cup, the URC is the main event for two of the four teams in the final four of the EPCR Challenge Cup.
On May 24, the Sharks will play either Benetton, another URC team, or Gloucester, an English team, in the Challenge Cup Final in London, should they get it through the difficult semi-final matchup against Clermont-Auvergne.
With Ulster destroyed, Clermont advanced to the next round.
