All four Irish provinces will have something on the line in next Saturday’s final round of Guinness Pro12 matches. In any event, the prospects of all four partaking in next season’s European Champions Cup and three of them in the end-of-season playoffs having been enhanced by the dramatic events of the weekend’s penultimate round of matches.
However, all of that is still to play for. Ulster's handsome 30-6 win over Leinster at the sold-out Kingspan Stadium cements their hold on fourth place, albeit by one point above the Scarlets, while dropping Leinster to third.
Faint hopes
Ulster
still may need to win at the Liberty Stadium against the Ospreys, who maintained their faint hopes of a Champions Cup place with Saturday’s 40-27 bonus-point win over Edinburgh. That said, Ulster could make the top four with a bonus-point defeat or even if taking nothing from the Liberty Stadium, provided
Munster
ensured the same fate for the Scarlets at Thomond Park.
With the top two, Glasgow and Connacht, meeting at the Sportsground, Leinster still have a home semi-final within their own control. A win over Treviso at the RDS ought to be enough, and a five-point haul would ensure a home semi-final.
Connacht’s defeat to Treviso, disappointing as it was, actually may not change their last-day permutations all that much. Although holding on for victory in Treviso on Friday night would have given them a four-point buffer over Leinster, in the heel of the hunt they were still going to have to beat Glasgow at the Sportsground anyway next Saturday to earn a home semi-final, as they’ll have to do now anyway.
As for Munster, Friday’s win over Edinburgh, coupled with Cardiff’s defeat to the Ospreys, means only the latter can deny Anthony Foley’s men a place in next season’s European Champions, and the Ospreys go into the final round four points behind Munster.
Victory for Munster against the Scarlets therefore will ensure their place in next season’s Champions Cup, while virtually ensuring Ulster’s place in the playoffs.
"It does not guarantee us anything next week," said Les Kiss in light of the Scarlets' win over the Dragons. "So it is going to become a massive game next week for us. Hopefully our friends down south can do a job for us as well and we can look after ourselves as well."
Indeed, Munster and Ulster can each do each other a favour. It would also mean Ulster would go into the playoffs with four successive wins.
“Momentum is an interesting thing. It can stop pretty quickly on you,” said Kiss, who noted how Ulster have kept rebounding from setbacks to stay in the mix, and that Saturday’s “very good performance” was built on toughing out difficult moments.
“It is interesting. This competition just keeps throwing up surprises each week, but I think from a momentum side of things it is important that we do not lose the sight of it, momentum is only something if you put something on top of each other, we put a couple of games together but we need to nail this one next week to actually roll into the final stages.”
Although appearing as phlegmatic as ever, Leo Cullen admitted he would need to look at Leinster's display in detail. Far from finding their straps, a run of real fluency and form continues to elude Leinster.
‘Fantastic form’
“I think a 30-6 scoreline wouldn’t suggest fantastic form,” he accepted, dryly. “But leading into the game, we were in decent form. In our last outing, we showed some good signs in attack and even today we created some good opportunities. There are certain aspects of our game that are in our control that we can be a hell of a lot better at. The players know that, they have a lot of experience out there.”
Estimating that the support from a capacity Musgrave Park crowd had been worth 10 points last Friday night, Anthony Foley was hopeful that Thomond Park will provide a similar backdrop for what will be Munster's last game of the season.
“We’d like to think so, it’s the last time we’ll play at home this year and we’ve got to show our worth again and make sure that we’re playing in Europe again next year.
“We need to make sure that we turn up in Thomond Park next week, fit, fresh and ready to run the legs off each other again. Basically, we’ve brought it back into our own control.”
As for Pat Lam and Connacht, their head coach admitted: “We have to bounce back, There ere eight teams finishing on Saturday, and we know for sure we have got a big game in our last round to secure a home semi-final. That probably hasn’t changed, it’s a straight bit shootout for the playoff game, nothing has changed there, but the biggest thing is that we have to step up our performance.”
