Posted by After the first two editions of the current format of the United Rugby Championship yielding no Welsh sides in the play-offs, the last three have seen one qualify in each year.
2023/24 had Ospreys sneaking in thanks to winning more games than Ulster, 2024/25 followed with the Scarlets taking eighth place ahead of Cardiff, and then last season of course saw the Blue & Blacks improve again to finish in sixth.
It’s a great achievement for any Welsh side to make that top half of the URC table with the restrictive playing budgets that should really see the four teams finishing in the bottom five alongside Zebre. And that’s before considering the never-ending off-field turmoil that the players are dealing with in this country.
So while each of the Scarlets, Ospreys and Cardiff unsurprisingly didn’t progress beyond the quarter-final having made the play-offs, they still secured their entries into the following season’s Investec Champions Cup. It is here where things started to fall down for the Welsh Walian sides though.
Trying to manage competing at European rugby’s top table and maintaining a place in the URC’s top eight with a squad built from one of the lowest budgets in the northern hemisphere is an extremely challenging task.
Supporters, sponsors, and the players themselves would expect to have a good go at the Champions Cup. They are big occasions, on the main TNT Sports channels, playing the top sides on the continent and going up against some of the best players in the world. Trying to explain that players are being rotated out of those fixtures to keep them fresh would not go down well.
That cannot fail to have an impact on the season as a whole though, with the top players asked to take on more minutes and increase their fatigue and chances of picking up a knock. The team is unable to perform at 100% week-in, week-out, injuries begin to pile up, and you end up with a squad playing hurt or being stretched to its limits.
Having qualified for the 24/25 Champions Cup, Ospreys followed that up by finishing in 12th, 8 points back from the play-offs that season. Having qualified for the 25/26 Champions Cup, Scarlets finished 14th, 26 points back from the play-offs that season.
Of course there are other factors at play, especially for the two teams in the West where there has, and continues to be, an existential threat to their very existence, but the challenge of attempting to compete on two fronts is still a major factor in the inability to go back-to-back in the URC play-offs for Welsh sides.
Now it’s Cardiff’s turn and the Blue & Blacks are undoubtedly in a better position to achieve that feat than the Scarlets and Ospreys were. The men from the capital have a much greater degree of certainty to their future after the Welsh Rugby Union stepped in as owners and signed the club up to the PRA25, and have been slowly building a relatively deep squad for the last three years.
There is also the slight switch to the northern hemisphere season calendar for the 2026/27 campaign that sees the first round of European action standing alone in mid-October, the second round doing the same in mid-December before a double header in early January. That removes some of the pressure from what would have been six games of European and Welsh derby action across the festive period.
It’s still a formidable task for Corniel Van Zyl’s side though, especially as the fixture gods have not been kind in scheduling Sharks at home just five days after the trip to Northampton, and the South Africa trip after the Champions Cup double header and clashing with internationals being in Six Nations camp.
The Cardiff squad will be tested to it’s limit in the quest to be somewhat competitive back at the pinnacle of European rugby and in trying to double up on trips to the URC play-offs. A huge amount of injury luck and some impressive coaching getting all 40-odd players in the squad to maintain a performance level will be the minimum requirement. A high bar indeed.
It puts pressure on the start of the season where the Blue & Blacks need to accumulate early points in beating Scarlets away and Zebre at home across the first two rounds before getting as much as possible from the trip to Leinster and visit of Sharks, and then finishing on a win at Ospreys. Then it’s riding a wave of momentum into December.
Struggle in this early part of the campaign though and it could become a bit of a slog once we get into the depths of winter and have to spend a fortnight in the South African summer. A fast start is always important, but this year for Cardiff it has all the potential to derail things before they’ve even begun.
Hopefully the opposite will be true and it sets the Blue & Blacks up for an historic run to achieve what has so far been the impossible. Ymlaen Caerdydd!
