The Vodacom Bulls should begin as the overwhelming favorites to defeat the French squad at Loftus Versfeld and make it to the quarterfinals for the first time, since they were unfortunate not to defeat Lyon in France in their group match in December. But when the DHL Stormers take on Stade Rochelais, the current two-time winners, at DHL Stadium, there is a lot of risk involved.
What is intriguing and can cause some angst is what both teams will do next. In the event that the Vodacom Bulls triumph, Franklin Gardens will host the victor of the Northampton Saints vs. Munster encounter. However, since that game is only scheduled for Sunday, even if White’s squad prevails, they will have to wait until then to find out if they will be travelling for their quarter-final.
The Vodacom Bulls will travel to England if Northampton wins. The Pretoria team’s players will spend the week at home if Munster prevails because they are hosting the Vodacom United Rugby Championship champions at Loftus. Furthermore, the two teams will meet twice in one week at the same location as Munster is scheduled to play a Vodacom URC game at Loftus the following week.
Not quite, but it’s nearly the same for the DHL Stormers. They will almost certainly be traveling to Dublin to play Leinster in the quarterfinal round if they manage to upset Stade Rochelais. The Leicester Tigers are in Dublin for Sunday night’s late game against Leinster.
The DHL Stormers are set to play Leinster in Cape Town two weeks after the quarter-finals, so if they do get to clash at the RDS Arena it will be the first of two games between the two teams, but in opposite hemispheres, in the space of a fortnight.
Played as the later of the two South African games, the Cape Town Round of 16 clash between the DHL Stormers and Stade Rochelais would challenge for being the plum game fo the weekend, particularly if what happened at the same venue in mid-December can be re-enacted. The Capetonians produced a Houdini act in getting up to win with a last gasp conversion from the touchline from clutch kick specialist Manie Libbok.
But there’s plenty of jeopardy everywhere, with Stade Rochelais and the DHL Stormers not the only good teams facing a potential early exit from the competition. It starts with an appetising showdown between two attack orientated teams, Harlequins and Glasgow Warriors, at The Stoop on Friday night.
Who would you choose as the winner? Glasgow are the away team but under the coaching of Franco Smith they are soaring in the Vodacom URC and are currently placed second behind Leinster on the log and look the only team capable of preventing Leinster from ending top for the third consecutive year.
In front of an enormous audience of over 60,000 people at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London a few weeks ago, Saracens soundly defeated Harlequins, who haven’t been as good as they were a few years ago. But they have plenty of game-breakers, led by the dynamic pivot Marcus Smith of England and the Springbok center Andre Esterhuizen, who will undoubtedly rejoin the Hollywoodbets Sharks for the 2020–21 season.
This first knockout round features two derbies: on Saturday, English teams Exeter Chiefs and Bath will square up at Sandy Park, while on Sunday, Racing 92—the team that Bok captain Siya Kolisi currently plays for—will travel to take on the fearsome Toulouse. Toulouse has gone through a few comparatively hard years.Following playing second fiddle to fellow French teams Stade Rochelais and Leinster for the last two years, they will be keen to get it right this year in a competition they have previously dominated.
Talking of Leinster, they must be going through what the Bill Murray character did in the movie Groundhog Day, when he woke up every morning to discover that he was reliving the day before. The Irish outfit have played Leicester Tigers several times at this stage of the season or similar in recent years, and also played against the Tigers in the pool phase. They’ve won every time they’ve met in the last few years, and usually quite comfortably, but being such strong favourites can sometimes backfire. Remember what happened to Leinster in last year’s Vodacom URC semi-final against Munster.
Returning to the subject of jeopardy, the Bordeaux Begles clash with Saracens should attract a lot of interest from both sides of the English channel, with Saracens considered the most likely English team to succeed after their big win over Harlequins even though they have trailed Northampton Saints for much of the season in the Gallagher Premiership.
There’s much focus in South Africa on the EPCR Challenge Cup games, with all three local teams that started the secondary competition getting to play in this year’s round of 16. The Hollywoodbets Sharks are sweating over the fitness of Eben Etzebeth but they shouldn’t need him to beat Zebre in their game on Sunday afternoon. There is far more jeopardy for the Emirates Lions, who are in Treviso to play Benetton, while the Toyota Cheetahs are going to be hard pressed to keep their campaign alive as they go to Clermont, a notoriously difficult venue for visiting teams.
