Records tumbled for Irish provinces at the weekend. But not for the right reasons, leaving the main protagonists searching for the right words to adequately cover the their dismay. “To say we’re a long way off it is completely wrong. I believe in this group,” said one. “The outside world doesn’t realise what this group has been through throughout the whole year,” spluttered another, while another, pain etched on his face, said “It obviously leaves us swimming upstream.” Another shocked coached muttered. “We’ve all done a little bit of soul-searching after that game, asking how we could have done things better.”
Skimming through the quotes, above, one would be forgiven for thinking they were coming from the likes of perennial strugglers Newcastle Falcons, Dragons, Vannes or Fijian Drua. Think again. Those lines emanated from a system held up as nonpareil – Gavin Coombes (Munster), Cian Prendergast (Connacht), Jacob Stockdale (Ulster) and Leinster scrum coach Robin McBryde. The good times have stopped rolling.
For the first time in 10 years (and six weeks), the four Irish provinces all lost on the same weekend. Not since March 2015, when the Welsh regions pulled off a clean sweep, have Irish rugby supporters been left without a single positive result to cling to.
Were the United Rugby Championship to wrap right now, only Leinster would make the play-offs, and next season’s Champions Cup. Munster are level on 41 points with eighth placed Benetton, but with a weaker points difference. They have flagging Ulster and Benetton at home in their final two regular season rounds so, barring disaster, should make the cut. Easier said than done, in a disaster-heavy campaign.
Munster may finish as high as sixth. They are capable of pulling it together. Even so, two provinces in the Champions Cup would represent Ireland’s worst return in the history of a competition it has triumphed in on seven occasions.
What of the other three provinces? Aside from a handful of giddy highs, all three have struggled. Two will finish the season without the head coach that led them into the campaign. All will lose stalwarts and club legends.
Before we go needs-must and remove Leinster from the equation, an acknowledgement they have stumbled in recent URC outings. Leinster thrashed Glasgow and Harlequins, en-route to a Champions Cup semi-final, but there have been defeats in two of their last four leagues matches. Bulls and Scarlets boosted their own playoff scenarios with excellent home wins against weakened Leinster sides, but ones that had multiple internationals in their match-day 23.
Leinster left Sheehan, Furlong, McCarthy, van der Flier, Conan, Doris, Gibson-Park, Prendergast, Lowe, Henshaw, Ringrose and Keenan in Dublin for that trip to Wales. If they beat Northampton Saints, on Saturday, and go on claim their fifth Champions Cup, their planning, resources and players will be hailed as masterful. If they falter again, and finish without any silverware, they will need rigorous peeling back off the canvas.
What of the other three provinces? Aside from a handful of giddy highs, all three have struggled. Two will finish the season without the head coach that led them into the campaign. All will lose stalwarts and club legends.
Rugby statistician Russ Petty offered up stark numbers, after the weekend’s URC action, highlighting the collective struggles of Munster, Connacht and Ulster against non-Irish opposition.
• 2021/22 – 24/36 wins (67% win rate)
• 2022/23 – 27/36 wins (75% win rate)
• 2023/24 – 25/36 wins (69% win rate)
• 2024/25 – 14/32 wins (44% win rate)
Added to this, Leinster have been dominant in games against their inter-provincial rivals. The blues have won all six inter-pros. Last season, they lost two of those six games so points were shared out a bit more.
Munster started the season with Graham Rowntree at the helm and memories of their URC title win, in Cape Town, not too distant. ‘Wig’ was gone before the end of October, though, and it took four months for the province to line up Clayton McMillan as his replacement. There were thrilling away wins over Connacht and La Rochelle, on back-to-back weekends but the rest of the season has been grim.
Munster had some troublesome injury issues to deal with – Mike Haley, Jean Kleyn, Craig Casey and Thaakir Abrahams all missed big chunks of the season. Their squad is not deep enough to cope and not enough younger players have forced their way into the regular rotations. They have been able to call on the likes of Calvin Nash (16 starts), Jack Crowley (14) and Tadhg Beirne (13) for most of their bigger fixtures, but the older guard have not been able to help as much. There have been just 10 starts, combined, for Peter O’Mahony, Conor Murray and Dave Kilcoyne.
Ulster were already in a rebuilding phase when Richie Murphy arrived, and big changes continue. It was confirmed, last week, that eight senior players will not be around for next season, the noteworthy names being John Cooney, Kieran Treadwell and Alan O’Connor.
Murphy’s side got off to a reasonable start to the season but went into a long spiral that saw them win just two games from 10 fixtures, between late October and mid-February. There was a mini revival in the URC, before Bordeaux (in the Champions Cup) and Leinster went try-crazy. Their playoff hopes were badly dented by a costly reversal to Sharks.
Connacht’s situation is bleaker, still. Heading into the season, Pete Wilkins has built a squad with experienced Ireland internationals, club stalwarts, interesting foreign signings and a liberal sprinkling of precocious youngsters, led by Cian Prendergast. “We know people are going to underestimate us and maybe see us as an easy game,” Mack Hansen told us, ahead of the season. “That’s great – they can do that all they like. We’ve talked about it. We don’t care about what anyone else thinks. We’re going to make it really s**t to play against us, wherever we are.”
Losing all six of their inter-pro matches in the URC put paid to any dreams of a 2015/16 miracle run, and focused switched to the Challenge Cup. Connacht’s plan was looking solid until Racing 92 arrived in Galway and squeaked out the right side of an 11-try thriller. They lost four straight games when former head coach Pete Wilkins stepped away, on sick leave. Wilkins departure was confirmed as permanent, a fortnight ago, with Cullie Tucker in as interim head coach until the end of the season.
Here is where each of the provinces sit, as we head into the final regular season rounds:
MUNSTER: Won 7, Lost 9, Points 41. Matches remaining – Ulster (home) & Benetton (home)
ULSTER: Won 7, Lost 9, Points 38. Matches remaining – Munster (away) & Edinburgh (away)
CONNACHT: Won 5, Lost 11, Points 35. Matches remaining – Edinburgh (home) & Zebre (away)
Munster would still back themselves to make the playoffs, and I would hold a similar view. They have Ulster and Benetton and home, and showed in 2022/23 that going on the road in knock-out games does not faze them.
Benetton, before they travel to Limerick, are at home to a Glasgow side chasing maximum points to lock in second spot, and keep pressure on leaders Leinster. Scarlets (43 points) and Cardiff (46) have given Welsh rugby a welcome tonic but both sides finish their regular season with stints in South Africa. Each point is likely to be won at a cost.
Ulster have Munster, away, then travel to Edinburgh. Connacht face the Scots, on the previous weekend, then travel to Italy to take on faltering Zebre. Both sides know they will need to win all remaining matches, possibly with try-scoring bonus points, then wait for final tallies.
As it stands, all three provinces are in danger of not only missing out on Champions Cup rugby. They are in danger of being left behind, in their own country. Andy Farrell and Simon Easterby have proved they care little about provincial ties, sentiment or pundit hot-takes.
This summer’s tour to play Georgia and Portugal – overseen by Paul O’Connell – will have a decent spread of players selected from the provinces. When the big names return from British & Irish Lions duty, the squad will turn decidedly blue.
If one were to look ahead to a squad Farrell may pick for Ireland’s November return to Soldier Field, Chicago, it could have as many as 25 Leinster players included. Farrell wants cohesion and form in their Ireland squad. Leinster are holding everything together.
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A bit unfair to call the Drua a ‘perennial struggler’ when they’ve made the Super Rugby play-offs the last two seasons. One bad season doesn’t mean they’re instantly poor every year lad
Time to import some more Bundhee OKhees…
LOL Drua aren’t perennial strugglers. Has this author just looked at tables to make some conclussions? Not reading if so.
Some comments pretty much spot on, article pretty much on point EXCEPT it entirely missed the key reason for the “other three” provinces struggles. FINANCE.
Dublin is of course the place with all capital city advantages you’d expect, key centre for advertisers, high population, massive area for high quality schools most with private high qualified rugby coach or coaches attached and so on.
Add to that that Leinster have got all their processes largely correct over a couple of decades with a sensible CEO in place until retirement a few years back, who never cared for the spotlight and did his job. As a consequence Leinster are probably the only club outside of France who are financially equipped to deal with modern life, rising costs and the competition from Top14 clubs.
A little financial bonus this year! The RDS being redeveloped so Leinster skip down the road to potential bigger crowds and even take a league game to Croke Park for a massive crowd against Munster to swell those bulging coffers. Little wonder they can afford a Barrett, an RG & a Slimani all at once, whilst the rest divest themselves and shrink their squads.
Central Contracting by the IRFU which for so long worked for the provinces is now a further pillar in Leinster’s finances with IRFU picking up 70% of 11 salaries for them compared to less than a handful for the other 3 provinces as of next season. That “sub” reduces to 60% in 2026 but by the looks of Leinster’s squad, that won’t make a dent in things, neither will it allow the other 3 to flourish.
Munster have been in hock to the IRFU since Thomond Park was redeveloped, though the management of that debt is agreeable as I understand it.
Ulster who previously stood as one of the few clubs to turn a profit in these islands are in a pitiful financial position and playing in the Parker Pen won’t help. They are letting players go who have no desire to leave, player’s well respected by their peers, 2 with more than 200 caps. I hope this won’t incense the censor, but Ulster have “neither a pot to pish in, nor a windie to fling it out of” as the expression goes for those in penury.
Connacht? Well, every family has it’s poor relations, the IRFU once stupidly considered winding them up, but only succeeded in winding up the entire Irish rugby population. The poor will always be with us and we all love Connacht.
I hope that adds something to the sum of all understanding.
Some great points (and phrases!) in there. Will be interesting to see where the provinces all lie in another few years. Had high hopes for Connacht, going into the season. I like the idea of one province having lots of young, plucky players with a few experienced lumps and locals to let them know what’s needed. Hopefully McMillan can get a quick handle on Munster.
It’s possible Leinster are becoming - or already are - victims of their own success. They do deserve huge credit for seeing where the game was going. The schools pathways that feed their academies have been well planned and financed. It’s now a case of their groundwork paying off.
Historically, Ireland’s single greatest problem at test level was it’s small pool of players. That’s now been recalibrated to be it’s single greatest strength. A strong and capable pool of 40 players to broadly allow them to be 3 deep in every position including a handful of hybrids.
I‘m worried the central contracts are beginning to erode that. How many times was Sexton or Murray picked in the last few years not on form but because they were 80% fit and essentially costing the IRFU 50 grand a match?
Sometimes the explanations lie within, sometimes without. And we don’t always look the right way.
The story of top flight rugby is that what won yesterday is not what wins today. The standards are improving and the margins are narrowing.
I don’t think the Irish provinces have regressed in quality, so much as the bar has been raised, and it keeps getting higher. A team needs to be really good in every department and to play to their potential in order not to be beaten by a mid-table team. Nobody takes Benetton lightly anymore. The Scottish teams are serious contenders. We're two games from the end of the regular season and there are 14 teams vying for the 8 playoff slots. And if it weren’t for the implosion in Welsh rugby administration in recent years, you’d have to believe that things would be even more competitive.
Also, independent of general trends, SA rugby is going from strength to strength. The Ireland teams lost all of their games this last weekend, but the SA teams won all of their games. That’s not going to happen every time, but its consistent with the overall reality that SA has been succeeding at national level, is supplying dozens of top players (and some coaches) to non-SA clubs, and has a rising tide of nextgen players that are increasingly in evidence. There could easily be 3 SA teams in the URC playoffs, and while none of them would be favorites against Leinster in a final, any of them would be legit contenders.
There is work to do in the non-Dublin Irish teams, but I would characterise it as needing to get ahead and stay ahead of the league, rather than a loss of quality per se.
That’s fair and I think it’s a fantastic league with all teams adding something.
If I supported any of the other 3 Irish provinces I wouldn’t actually be too upset roaming around 6th or 5th place in a competitive league. The standards are improving for sure.
The other 3 seem to have an awkward blend of youth and players in their last season or two. A bit more stability with their coaching set ups and backing the younger lads should be the way forward. They only have 3 of the 14 central contracts between them so they shouldn’t have to worry about test players.
Agree that any SA side would be serious underdogs going into a final against Leinster. The only team I can see causing an upset is the Bulls because they’ve beaten fully-loaded Leinster teams home and away over the last few years. The arrival of RG means that physically dominating Leinster (which you need to do to stand half a chance) will be much harder, though.
The Sharks have the players to beat Leinster but not the cohesion or confidence while the Stormers just don’t have the depth.
Very good summation of the recent state of affairs. The provinces all need 4 or 5 young players to be hits, each season, or else they struggle for depth. Need some meaningful games for the young prospects to cut their teeth, for a season or two, before having more responsibility thrust upon them.
I wouldn’t look too much into Leinster losing to Bulls and Scarlets with weakened teams. Bulls did remarkably well to steal that and as Leinster are de facto guaranteed 1st seeding for the URC playoffs they can be forgiven for the blip against Scarlets.
Leinster focussing on ensuring that 1st seeding was bad news this year for almost all URC teams but especially for the Irish who must play them twice. So thats zero from 10 possible points there. Couple that with Welsh opposition having to play Dragons twice, so thats a quaranteed 10 points there. For example, Connaught beat Wales top team Cardiff this year 3/3. The biggest failing for me was a lack of Nous to finish close matches.
While there has been a dip I think it has been a bit of a perfect storm and they are not quite as poor as the table might indicate.
100% - Leinster are in excellent shape. And having to play the other provinces twice - missing out on second darts at Dragons & Zebre, for example - doesn’t help. That being said, SA sides have to run a similar gauntlet. Still feel Munster will make the playoffs, but tough for Ulster and Connacht.
A brilliant and pretty sobering read!
Thank you. Had really hoped Munster would kick on from their 2023 URC title, but they’ve slipped back again.