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All you need to know about the URC and the local prospects

rugby24 September 2025 07:15| © SuperSport
By:Gavin Rich
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What is it: The Vodacom United Rugby Championship

It used to be the Celtic League, then the Pro12 and when South Africa entered two teams towards the end of the Super Rugby era, it became the Pro14. Then came Covid, and this country’s parting of ways with New Zealand and Australia to take part in a new inter-continental and cross-hemisphere competition known as the URC.

There are 16 teams that participate in a competition that begins in September and is concluded with the Finals Series the following June, from which the top 8 in a 16 team log qualify.

Teams in the same conference play each other home and away and there is one cross-conference game against each of the other teams, to make it an 18 game league phase. The Finals Series comprises a quarterfinal round, semifinal and final.


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2. WHO COMPETES?

There are four teams in the SA conference - the Vodacom Bulls, the Hollywoodbets Sharks, DHL Stormers and Emirates Lions. There are also four teams in the Ireland - reigning champions Leinster, 2023 champions Munster and Ulster and Connacht - and four in the Welsh conference (Cardiff, Dragons, Scarlets and Ospreys).

The combined Scotland/Italy conference includes 2024 champions Glasgow Warriors, derby rivals Edinburgh and the two Italian teams - Benetton based in Treviso and Zebre in Parma.

3. AN EXTRA ANGLE

The top eight finishers in the URC don’t just make it into the playoffs, with the top four teams enjoying home ground advantage, they also qualify for the following year’s Investec Champions Cup, regarded as the top club/regional competition in world rugby.

There is high prestige in that so there’s a battle within the overall battle for silverware to qualify for Europe - much like there is in English football. The teams that don’t make the top half play in the less prestigious EPCR Challenge Cup.

4. THE LOCAL TEAMS

THE NEARLY MEN - VODACOM BULLS.

The Bulls have played in three of the four finals and have been on the losing side every time. They will be desperate after two runners-up finishes to make the extra step this year, something their recently discarded coach Jake White ironically may have paved the way for with his good contracting.

The Bulls will welcome back Springbok backline stars Handre Pollard into their fold this season, as well as sometime Bok squad member Nicolaas Janse van Rensburg.

The Bulls’ new coach Johan Ackermann is highly regarded, particularly by some of the players who played under him when he was the assistant coach of the Junior Springbok team that won the recent World Junior Championship. 

With the depth available, the Bulls should challenge strongly again but Leinster, who are almost an Ireland international team in everything but name, are a tough team to beat.

THE RICH MEN - HOLLYWOODBETS SHARKS

After a disastrous 2023/2024 campaign, where they finished second last, the Sharks produced a much improved performance last year by finishing third. They were beaten by the Bulls in the Pretoria semifinal after advancing through an exciting semifinal win over Munster.

The Sharks have the financial muscle that some other local teams don’t, which explains the high number of current Springbok Boks on their books, but that can be a poisoned chalice in the sense that the top players are heavily committed to an international schedule that sometimes overlaps and which, because it is all year round.

The Sharks’ chances of winning the competition this year will depend on how engaged their international players are and for how long. Coach John Plumtree, heading into his third season in charge, has contracted from outside less this season than in the previous two, and he will be banking on a core of players making the improvement they should make now that they have been exposed to his training and conditioning methods over a period of time.

If everything goes well, the Sharks could be the best SA bet for the Champions Cup because they have the marquee players who can compete should they make the playoffs.

THE AMBITIOUS MEN WHO ARE BUILDING - DHL STORMERS

That ambition is arguably not focused so much on right now, for this is still a period where the Stormers’ equity partners, Red Disa, are still focused on consolidating a business that took a big hit when the Western Province union was going through financial woes. However, director of rugby John Dobson is busy with a project that he hopes will see the inaugural URC champions (2022) become strong challengers for the main European prize in 2029.

The Stormers already have quality players like the exciting and versatile Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu and Damian Willemse on their books, as well as future stars like Suleiman Hartzenberg, Andre-Hugo Venter and Paul de Villiers, but have been bolstered by the arrival of Bok scrumhalf Cobus Reinach and former Sharks Bok prop Ntuthuko Mchunu.

He will still play for the main rivals, the Bulls, in the coming season, but Bok strongman Wilco Louw has signed a long term contract that clicks in at the start of next season and there is also talk of an imminent return to the Cape for Bok wing Cheslin Kolbe.

The Stormers may not have the depth to challenge for the main title this year but should again make the playoffs, which they have done in all four years of the competition.

THE TEAM ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN - EMIRATES LIONS

The Lions appeared to be using their Carling Currie Cup campaign once again as a building block for the URC and seeing they came unstuck with that policy last season it will be interesting to see if they can turn that around now.

The Lions don’t boast the squad depth of the other local franchises and if they have buying power they haven’t exercised it, but their policy is to develop youngster sand build from there, with the program started in the Johan Ackermann era as coach which led to three successive appearances in Super Rugby finals being used as the prototype for success.

However, unlike then, the Lions have struggled to hold onto their players once they have laid down a marker as future stars, and Springbok wing Edwill van der Merwe is the latest to follow a list of players that includes the two Tshituka brothers, Vincent and Manu, as well as Jordan Hendrikse who have moved to Durban.

The Lions shouldn’t be title contenders this year but as a team that has missed out on Champions Cup qualification in all four seasons that might be the limit of what they should aim at. In other words, finish in the top eight for the first time.

They've come close the past two seasons but need to be more consistent than they have been if they want to make the graduation to the elite competition.

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