Which URC Teams Are Actually Built for the Playoffs? Harry Runs the Numbers | Lekker Rugby Pod

This is the Lekker Rugby Pod, only on Megaphone Rugby. Welcome back to the Lekker Rugby Pod and this is one I've been waiting for a little bit. Harry's been gallivanting all over the world with famous guests and people of note in the rugby world. And I asked him, put up my hand and said, Harry, can we have a chat again, please? And then the pair on the screen said, is it Harry?

Who is this talking to me? Where's the beard, man? How's it, man? I'm trying to look young. no what happened was i went to the barber uh shout out to my wonderful barber toya toy was in a mood um and i was in a sleepy mood so i came in you know the hot towel and and you close your eyes and such and then what she says she poses a question it sounds like a rhetorical question she goes let me ask you something is this is a man's world i was like yeah probably sure you know all in all marginally we get away with more we still do more of the bad stuff um it's probably easier for us in most venues um and you're you're punished for your mistakes more than that you know so that's my stock i'm like it sounds good it sounds smart and she goes mm-hmm it sure is and then she starts to like jab me with the the razor suddenly i'm getting attacked my ears bleeding uh part of my face is gone and then she starts to tell me a story about how she knows it's a man's world because her man has done her wrong and it turns into the blues song and uh with a bit of violence and uh when i open my eyes and take a look at the carnage there ain't no beard it's not a band's not a man's world that day um so she d she bearded me she was giving me a lot of really really blatant examples of how men have done her wrong and it's the same thing over and over and you and you guys and suddenly i was one of those guys and all i was just sitting there captive so uh the beard's making a comeback it'll become back stronger and better don't worry and i mean i'm interested to know what you did at the barber are you going for the beard specifically i mean i only go i only go for the beard and i i really for the most also i never look at the mirror the only time i look at myself is during a pod um and i just shave with a you know a razor in the shower on the head i have to shave that every two or three days uh because my hair still grows it just doesn't grow on the top top and but the barber is my i suppose it's sort of a luxury it's sort of a nice feeling you have the hot towels the lemon and the smack on the head and and usually a really bright and optimistic conversation, but not this week.

This week was the gender war. The manosphere was under attack. I go to a Pakistani. Tooth chuff, in and out 10 minutes, done. The one time I shaved my beard was by accident because I was trimming it and the blade slipped because I had one sitting higher and I cut the whole line in my beard.

So I had to shave the whole thing off and my kids haven't stopped laughing to this day. It was the funniest thing I've ever seen because they've never seen anybody out of beard. So, yeah. You look like a Dutch painter, you know, from the 1600s. They always had those sort of very full goatees.

What's his name? You look like Gendel Sanders, man. Van Dyke. Gendel Sanders. Somebody said I look like Gendel Sanders.

He's a joke. You're a serious man. So, yeah, it's interesting. You know, I do think there's a metaphor in it. I always find metaphors like building back better.

So, you know, I'm committed now to taking care of the skin under the beard and doing rights and these different products you put on your beard to make it soft. So, the audience can watch with great interest the resurrection of my grizzly beard. I think we just screwed our algorithm by talking about beards for 15 minutes before we started talking about the rugby. This is a rugby show. Yeah, man, come on.

yes all right well it is somewhat relevant because the ghost the patron saint ruben van hidden afi's boy has taken the line out he's been lifted to the top and he will never be denied so it's all about beards there were some people who weighed in on uh you said blacker back is our creation for the wonderful swivel-hipped supernaturally um extraordinarily illogically strong little wings with scrum caps on unnecessarily and what of the beard and so there was some really cool stuff we haven't found we haven't quite found it yet so maybe this is the portion that what the reason for this portion is help us find you know how the beard makes us stronger you know um even kubus reynach bless his soul not an acl looks like you know that beard is going to be the key to his quick recovery it's going to be a miracle you'll see samson the samsons you know that's maybe not a bad idea. I like the beards. Some of them actually look quite funny without the beard, like myself. I can't stand looking at myself without a beard. Luckily, I don't have to look at myself.

But anyway, it's all about the URC top eight. You did a very interesting exercise in the next the other day on your spreadsheet and you took the top nine teams up to Connacht. I thought it was out of it, but when I did my calculations, which differ from yours, by the way, Connacht seems right back in the running. So explain that graph to me. I'll put it on the screen here.

Yeah, so what I did, and it's sort of a trend. it's a trend-finding, trend-spotting type exercise. I put the nine teams up there and next to them, you know, obviously they're ordered in rank, but next to them, I put their points differential and two things really leap out quickly and why I don't have any faith in Konaug's going forward, even though, again, we should say to Gráinne, Šobja, we give great honor to one of the great victories in the history of the universe that's, you know, probably up there with the guy who made elephants go over the Alps, Hannibal, beat the Romans. Kornacht is minus, is no, you know, Kornacht is plus seven only on points differential and Cardiff is minus two. So those two teams leap out as they're not playoff ready.

I mean, if they do make it to the dance, they'll be kicked out pretty soon. And then I look across at things like tries. And that's interesting too, because you really see a top two, you know, Glasgow and Stormer is on the tri-margin. And they both do it by having, it's very difficult to score tries against them. You wouldn't have known that from these two weekends in South Africa for Glasgow.

But generally speaking, they have the kind of playoff stinginess that you like. Your Bulls, right there behind. And Leinster too. So you can look at the Bulls, Leinster, Glasgow and Stormer immediately on tri-margin. Forget bonus points and what this is in the log.

Those are the top four teams. So how does Lions do it then? How do our Lions do it? So four categories that really leap out for you and show you why the Joburg Lions are doing it a different way and they're so good. One is just get the ball in a Lion's hands and make a carry.

They're averaging 4.22 meters per carry. That's over a meter per carry more than Glasgow. That's phenomenal. That gives you sort of like I could just play ground stroke tennis from the baseline forever because I know I can keep loading up.

If I get 4.22 meters per carry, and that's, you know, over the course of a season, when you're looking at thousands of incidents, that's a really hard stat. That stat means something. You know, Bulls are the top of the league, actually, 4.46.

So the Gauteng teams are relying on really brutal over-the-gain line carrying. So Lions are the second least in numbers of carries, but they're second in the efficacy of carry. The only team that carries less than that is Stormers. Stormers just don't need to carry the ball that much. They don't have to make long attack sets.

The lines, though, do. And then they also are phenomenal at making clean breaks. 112, that leads the league. They create the most broken field space, get through your line, scampering behind, which also translates from offloads. 183 offloads clearly far and away by a by a margin of almost 60 offloads ahead of the bulls and an ulster so you get the flavor from those four stats of not carrying very much but carrying brutally when you do getting through the line from those carries and creating some of those breaks from offloads that's lion style and um that's so that's one thing that leaps out of g the other thing links out to you we look at the top two is there starts to be a bit of a wobble with glasgow you know they you start to look at a lot of things have to go right for them and one of the things that they're not doing well enough is kicking they are the lowest kicking team they carry the most um it almost looks like they're on the on the the final sort of uh iteration of that high carry low kick style when most other teams have gotten a memo and said you really need to kick so for for example, kicks Stormers, 448 so far in the season from hand, Glasgow 338.

So 100 difference. That's a strange difference when you look at the top two teams. If you add upon that, the Stormers have the best kick retention rate. It's Cardiff and the Stormers. They get it back 22% of the time they kick, almost a quarter of the time.

So you want to kick a lot if you have that stat. Everyone else, pretty much 16% to 18%. the differential between 16 to 18 and 22 over the course of 444 kicks is a lot of regained kicks so the stormers are doing it at the top with a lot of categories that i've picked obviously i've curated this but still there are very important categories they're very strong on meters per carry not as good as the lions and the bulls but strong we saw sasha doing something that Hugh is still gaggling about is you can just monster people from 10. The kick, keep game, very important. But then let me draw your attention to dominant tackles.

8.1% of Norman Lakers boys and the Stormers, you know, when they go to tackle, they dominate you. 8.1%. And you look at the rest of the chart and no one is even approaching six.

Let's see. The second best would be the Lions at 5.7. Bulls, 5.6.

So this African team's strong in the tackle, but it's a quantum leap to go from the fours and fives to 8%. It means that you're in extreme danger when you run into the Stormers' defense, because they'll turn you over with Paul de Villiers and Pranis Fauri, who had a wonderful passage on our pod talking about how, how you choose and where you go. But the need to have a Ben Jason Dixon dominant tackle preceding that, you know, where you put your leg all the way north-south and you get hands on the ball, that's your best friend. Those two, that's a cousin's, you know, dominant tackle, turnover. Those two things go together.

And then finally, the scrum, a phenomenal weapon. Only the Bulls and the Stormers use the scrum as a proper weapon in the irk right now. when you take how many penalties that have been won and then subtract any infringement so it could be a free kick or a penalty stormers plus 19 if you just translate that just multiply by three so three times one 19 you're looking at you know 50 plus points for free um bulls plus 10 the rest of it is minus and teams like munster are really struggling with minus 39 and i just cannot seem to use the scrum as a weapon. All the Irish teams are suffering. Leinster minus 11, Munster minus 39, Ulster minus 22.

And then, interestingly enough, Glasgow is not a great scrum team too. So they try to just clear the ball, get the ball, use it. You know, they don't want to use it in the scrum. They want to use it outside the scrum. And then lineouts, again, you have Stormers top.

So looking at a coach like Rito Thlungani, you know, who has his remit is forward pack. best line out in the comp tied with Leinster best scrum in the comp ahead of the Bulls but just you know clearly class and then dominant tackles most of those are done by forwards yeah you know that's a nice piece of work Rito so we're going to have Rito on this week and he comes from an area of the world that you know very well and it's not the area of the world that you expect Rito himself with his background with his where he came from to wind up now coaching, you know, probably one of the best forward, just strictly forward coaches, definitely in New York and maybe across most comps in Cape Town. Now he's a Cape Town guy. It's not a likely story, but you can see when you look at these stats, you know, hat off. So why is Glasgow number two?

You know, you should say, well, it doesn't sound like it. Look at them with their six cards and their low penalty count. Look at them with their keep the ball alive. They're very much a different team from everyone else. And it's tempting to anoint Franco Smith as, you know, the genius of the irk.

And he's doing a lot with little. But we should also look at the other coaches and say, it's not clear that this thing can repeat. You know, they are the hunted. And so people have found ways around this. So they found ways to defeat it.

And one thing I would say if I was in Franco's ear is he needs to kick more. His team needs to kick more. They are not bad at regaining it. Carl Steyn not a bad operator at that They probably need to do more of that They were probably about 10 kicks short at the DHL That interesting I mean how much of this do you think is Okay, this is the season's figures, but how much of it has changed in the recent past? Like, you talked about the points, you know, the trials difference and the likes in the last two games against the Lions and the Stormers were woeful for Glasgow and for the statistics as well.

Same for the Stormers and the Bulls. I mean, how much was bad in the beginning for the Stormers, good in the beginning, then a bit of a dip and now picking up again. The Bulls bad in the beginning, now starting to trend upwards. The Lions had a bit of a dip, that big loss against the Bulls, but on an upwards trip lately. I mean, if we look at the second part of the season in isolation, if we can, I'm not sure you have those statistics, but what does that tell us?

Are teams picking up or are certain teams slipping back? No, that's important. And I always try to be honest with numbers. And so I've divided the season to sort of three parts, three chakas. And I'll give you an example.

So some of these are pretty constant. The way the Stormers have played had a small dip, but in the long season, this stuff hasn't really had a lot of volatility. That's what I'm looking for. Leinster, on the other hand, as they've come right a little bit, you can see that they're not getting as carded as much. So they lead the league with 17 cards.

That's way too much. That's like New Zealand teams. And they don't lead in anything else for lineouts. And with Archea gone, it changed some of the shape. And I would say, this is probably going to be counterintuitive, one of their best players, Archea, being gone, I think it helped them play a little more inside themselves.

They didn't have a point of difference with a 6'10 center offloading. So they had to draw back a little bit. And so I think that's an example of a team that did change for the better. A team that changed for the worse, obviously, the sort of falling off a cliff is Ulster. And part of that is, again, they're not getting any really dominant tackles.

And they've lost people that were creating their dominant tackles. So I would put that down more to personnel and not to a coaching shift. On a coaching shift basis, you can look at the Bulls coming right and in my estimation, finishing top four. And even though they're number seven right now, I wouldn't worry if I was a Bulls fan. The final two games just look like you can rack up some points.

But I would draw everyone's attention to that meters per carry and the clean breaks being developed and the really strong scrum. So that's classic Bulls rugby, the combination of brutality and speed. So brutality in the carry and the set piece and then enough speed to finish off things. And that's what was lacking. So the correct ratio, the Bulls had a little too much to keep the ball alive when the fitness levels hadn't matched up with the plan.

So we call the competence, probably not the right word, it's more about fitness. You know, fit for duty, fit for purpose. There was a purpose and it was absolutely right. You know, stretch defenses and then make them break. Look what the Lions have done with that.

So it's almost like the Lions are maybe a couple of seasons into this thing with extreme S&C, probably burned out when they begin the season, dead legs, and then they work themselves into it. Their superior fitness at the Lions, coupled with the place they play, is really stretching our positions. I think that's where the Bulls are now. so the question is does it kind of gel in enough time to understand to withstand the increased pressure the you know you test a car that you've developed but you have to put it under extreme conditions you know let's run it for 48 hours and and uh and throw shit at it so i think the bulls are reaching that point right now where we'll see does it have the if does it have playoff it has it is the windshield bolted in you know or is it going to crack? And so I don't know.

Right now I would tip the Bulls to get through, to be in the quarterfinals and to take care of the Lions in a quarterfinal and be in the semis. And that semi, I suppose, would be against the Stormers. That would be block box office. So I think it's all, if you said to Johan Ackerman when he took the job, hey, I'm not going to tell you how, where, when, but you get into the quarters, you win that and go to the semis he'd say i take it right i mean that's it yeah so they're in the game um the other for the other team that that makes me think about it is is connect so conduct is languishing at nine you know looking in some people have them getting through under permutations i don't i have them having had their best win ever and they're happy with that and that was a pinnacle and because i say that because they they are you know uh square on tries they they let in as many tries as they score uh they carry a lot but they don't get anywhere they have extremely low uh meters per carry 2.8 you know that's uh it's bordering on almost you know 50 and that's on that kind of stat you don't want that that's it's almost like you should not carry They had the least line breaks, the least offloads.

They have a terrible percentage of retaining kicks, so 11%. Even though against Stormers, that was one of the keys to their win, is getting the ball bouncing and nabbing it. And that was not where that guy wanted the ball to go, by the way. It was just a gift. So I just don't see them being able to take this into the playoffs.

I don't see them making the playoffs. I do think the superior season long quality of teams like Ulster and Munster in what they call the interprofrigels or whatever interpros I think that'll that'll come back to haunt them I think it takes one more season by Lancaster to get them I want to just interrupt you a little bit here because I would like to take each team's last two games and we talk about which one of those two they will win or lose and then extrapolate the points and get to a table. I want to put it into context here. For example, Connacht is playing Munster and then Edinburgh. I would think Munster after this weekend's beatdown of Ulster would be the favourites.

But then I look at your statistics and they're pretty evenly matched. So that to me is almost a toss-up, for example. Would you mind doing that? Yeah, so I cannot recapitulate every single game that I did, but I went ahead and played it out. and I forecast things.

So in the end, my table ends up being Stormers number one just by a point over Glasgow number two just by a point over Leinster. And they're almost just by a point over the Bulls. So it's Stormers. I have a Stormers one, Glasgow two, Leinster three, Bulls four. Bulls win, but I just think they're starting out too far behind.

And for Stormers fans, of course, it's galling because we know all we have to do is take care of Kornacht and this whole thing would be academic. But it's going to be tight. Leinster and Glasgow. I don't like Glasgow right now with the energy they've got. So I'm assigning a little bit to that.

And then I'm just looking at the schedule and saying, yes, for sure, Bulls will do better than the Lions. They will leap for the Lions. I'm thinking Munster. Sorry, Ari. I think Munster is going to beat Gonnacht and the Lions and get 10 points.

And they're on 51. That means they end on 61. The Bulls can maximum get 59 now with 10 points from two games. And that puts them behind Munster for me and puts them in fifth, I think. So the point of departure for us then is we have a different view of how Munster and Lions will go.

I think Munster is going to beat them. After what I saw on Saturday, a way game for the Lions. I think Hugh Griffin told me The Lions lost one overseas in 2024. Yeah. I mean...

I am picking against that history and saying the Lions will win. But I don't think they will do enough to stay ahead of the Bulls because I think any wins they have will be, you know, the four-point, no bonus point, you know, by the skinny underpants. And then I think as far as the Who survives on the bottom end, I still think Ulster sneaks in and Cardiff as well at seven. Ulster at eight, Cardiff at seven. And then I got Munster at six.

So that's, you know, I mean, we get small points. Yeah. By the way. Yeah. We will know soon, but this is what it looks like to me is a playoff schedule that the organizers would love.

Because you have a Derby, four versus five Bulls, Lions. And maybe it's Lions versus Bulls, Bulls versus Lions, whoever. That's a Helting Derby. You have Munster, Leinster. That's a 85,000 people want to watch type playoff.

And then you have on the next round, if it works right, you'd have Stormers versus Bulls. Or you might have Leinster-Glasgow, which is also box office. So if it came down to Leinster versus Glasgow on one side, Bulls-Stormers on the other side, the Urk is living its dream. Yeah. That's it.

Wow. Can you imagine? Any one of those four teams in the final will be box office, like you said, no matter where it's played. Can you imagine? Awesome, man.

the weird the permutation about glasgow is they don't they don't get to have a home final um if they get to the final they have to host it in ulster which is weird um if the stormers my little baby stormers um ride the return of ruben van hierden and uh do what they should do then we'd have um a home final in cape town that didn't work out last time but um i think this time it will just on that subject of Glasgow, the reason why they won't have a final is because the Commonwealth Games are going to be on their grounds. Nothing to do with the rules or anything. Can you imagine? Well, we played in Orlando Stadium in 2010, remember? Super Rugby.

Right. Well, maybe it was in South Africa, which is down the road. I suppose it's not the same thing. I'm interested. That's going to be awesome.

I hope you're right, honestly. I hope the Bulls end fourth. I hope the Lions beat Munster. I mean, clearly, obviously, I always support the South African teams. I'm just worried about the Lions form on tour.

They don't travel well. That's the thing. Like we said, dark track. Like Rian said, they don't play well on a dark track, remember? So I agree with you in that to worry.

I think I'm looking at the Lions a bit differently because they are looking at themselves more differently. I think there's players there that have gotten confidence that they never had before, and they have gelled properly. They've had the right amount of time. it's almost like one year from now what will the bulls look like and i i would imagine much better so but the alliance have that they have that they have enough um losses in the tank they have a lot memories look at the what happened with the stormers in those terrible 10 dark days that you wrote so uh eloquently about on on megaford rugby where you really sort of recapitulate the roller coaster of emotions but look what happened behind the scenes and i'm privy to some of that of you know really deciding to go through grief full force like don't don't hide from it now it's going to take a it's going to take a toll on you and there you go you know konacht takes takes a scalp but it sped up the process of grieving in such a way that they came out just so angry so embarrassed so so ready um and so willing to fight for each other and then you have you know and one of the best performances of the entire season if you count the the whitewashing of leinster in the beginning and then there's the demolition like of glasgow it shows you how much of a role emotion plays in high performance sport in a team environment of young men trying to navigate through life i think there's something similar brewing at the lions i don't know if it'll work out i have them losing to the bulls you know in the first round of the playoffs but just just being in the playoffs at all. And so I do think that they'll, I think they're going to, they're going to be held to play even away.

And that's probably the, you're right. That's probably the big, that's their big next obstacle. That's the thing they have to, it's almost like the spring box for a long time where there's incredible home team, but seem to play, you know, 30% worse on the road in Australia, particularly obviously in New Zealand, but even places like Ireland. and and russie's big job was to say you know to believe in yourself but also to come out with swagger not just don't overplay the underdog thing where you almost become a dog you know you have to be a you have to bite somebody you know you have to go out there and do something and fight and so i think the lions have some fight in them and maybe they also want to prove us all wrong because you know we were sort of not believing them and so they probably have a lot of things they can put up on the wall and say, look what this guy said and look what that guy said. And you and I both know how much of a role that plays inside teams.

The us against the world, perceived slights, insults, grievances. It's not just, you know, the trolls who really are out of bounds. We hate them. But I'm talking about just actual reasonable critique. It can motivate you.

You know, you want to go, I'm going to prove you wrong now, even if you do it the right way. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. That's exciting. Before we move on to the A-Index, I want to just talk to you about a bit of just homework on admin I call it Couple of things we started a WhatsApp channel so that you can know informed whenever we would do something new on megaphone because youtube seems to be on a different planet lately it doesn send notifications nobody knows if you posting something uh we post articles on our website people don't know where of that on that uh every sunday we sort of publishing a we call it a sunday briefing a megaphone sunday newspaper so you can have a nice read on sunday afternoon and it's also sort of recaptures the week so make Make sure if you go into megafilharagpy.com and you subscribe, it's for free.

You'll get an email or you'll get notified on the WhatsApp channel as well. So watch out for that. And then we've got a couple of exciting things coming up. You just mentioned we're talking to Rita Groomwani and Ben Jason Dixon. Published that on Sunday.

And then we're going to post the second part of Jamie's interview on Monday, not Friday. I was planning for Friday, but I'm going to do it on Monday. That episode took so long to record. It was almost two hours. So we decided to split into two.

and like people rightfully said, first time we've ever seen you talked out of the room kind of a thing. I'm not sure if that's the right way to put it. Somebody who talked more than you, Harry, that was an interesting one. Champion. He's a champion talker.

He's got more verbs, more nouns, more adjectives than anyone else and more voice impressions, which is great fun. On the Stormers, until they stop us, until they get tired of us, we're having a coach player series and you won't even believe who we have coming after that. So it's unique. I don't know of any other pod that's doing this, but something quite magic about having, you know, when we had Dobbo and Dion together and the way Branis and Dobson look at each other, how they play off each other, it's magic. You know, you get a much better insight about the level of respect, camaraderie that can exist.

You can get a real sense of what kind of a coach a coach is when he's a, we can take a step back and sort of allow, you know, Fari, who, to be fair, is probably almost the same age as some of the coaches. The one thing I noticed was the short hand between them. They don't have to say much. They know what they're going to be saying. They look at each other and they finish each other's sentences and say, yeah, that's quite noticeable, I would think.

There's a great, I don't know if you've seen this show where the Stormers have it on their social media, where Dobbo is sitting in a chair. He cannot see who's behind him. And then they say a thing and he has to recognize the voice and guess who the play is. But the players are trying to sound like other people. And then he nails some of them so easily.

And then Ben Jason Dixon comes and these guys are like doing helium balloons. And so it changes the voice. He doesn't know. And then Sasha does a perfect imitation of Fennus, Andre Hugo Fenter. I mean, literally he does Andre Hugo Fenter.

And that's who Dobbo picks in the end. He cannot figure it out. It's like, ah, what's this accent? How's it? and Sasha is deadpanning it, just being, you know, our angry hooker.

So there's a lot of that you can catch. And we hope you'll see that coming up on this next one where we have Ben Jason Dixon. He's always been one of the most fascinating, out of the box, not the same old, same old. And maybe this is sort of a theme of the Stormers. You know, on the one hand, on paper, you know, incredibly athletic, incredibly the dimensions of him, the shoulders, the shoulder-hip ratio, the explosive hamstrings, the hamstring bellies, weight from like actual measurements and things he can do, repeat, repeat loads.

Unbelievable. At the same time, and you say, you know, Stellenbosch boy, whatever. But then you go across and say, you know, his master's thesis was in using the fulcrum of, you know, you go, wow, this guy's a brainiac. And then when you talk to him in real life, it couldn't be sillier. And but at the same time, he's a man of faith and he follows those.

and he's trying to figure out his part in the world. And, you know, and Rito is sort of that, but he's 15 years on in that process. And I'm really looking forward to see what that looks like. Two people that would have never in ordinary life probably have become working associates, colleagues or friends, and now they're joined at the hip, you know, like literally he's talking about how to lift someone and over and over and over and spend so much time together. we hope we're bringing you something of high quality and we want to make sure that we are that we um we're not just same old same old run of the mill sitting you know in our garage and throwing opinions at the wall you know we're trying to bring curated things but also our relationships that are deep they're embedded and they're true and they're real um and you know i'm looking i'm looking forward to so much to to see what that looks like and if it works we can keep doing this sort of coach player thing uh and it sort of mirrors you and i you know where you take people that have you know apparent differences but then put them in the same place through the same topic something they both love and then you see what the magic happens yeah the interesting thing for me when you spoke to um the double and and branas i wasn't supposed to not be in that conversation but i just saw this little love fest going on there and i felt this is not my place you know keep quiet in here and i you know after we stopped recording i started talking to doha and he he told me what he really thinks for the bulls i wanted to say that i'm gonna record that was great that was great i love that yeah that was too anyway um i wanted to get back i want to talk to you about you griffin's sort of conversion to stormadom but before we do that just quickly our last one that we we've got lined up you mentioned the lady from the the connoisseur one who laid into you for your post-match reaction, not giving enough credit to Connacht.

And now that turned out to be a good thing. The way you handled it, she handled it. Talk to you about that. Because that's actually quite a famous person that we're going to be talking to soon. I didn't know how famous she was when I was arguing with her.

I would have said the Honourable or something. I mean, she actually is the one who presents the Irish version of their Oscars or BAFTAs or something. she's a known personage she is uh one she's one of the people that you know about one word one name in ireland uh and and we've had coaching from her now how to say her name groenya so that's cool it's not if you looked at it on on paper you'd say it was grain yeah but it's groenya and then to double down her surname is uh is a shabia so now you're like whoa that's that's a that's a mouthful and so grogna reached out and she was perturbed outraged possibly incendiary angry she was hurt at my at my left-handed faint praise of connuct for their win their almighty win their earth-shattering um history diverting changing win and it's true that i came at it from a standpoint of what was lost and um and i didn't give them their due and maybe that's important because it probably is the best rugby moment of conox life of history and and they stood up they they made us they got they got under our skin they got angry they got us angry and so that's something that i've been thinking about is the importance of being full of fire but not just pissy angry petty you know when you lose your way don't lose the plots in your anger make sure it's righteous anger be angry but sin not um and so yeah and i've been so i got this book called the daily dad i've been trying to be a better father and it asks really awkward questions like you know what behavior are you exhibiting right now that you don't want to see in your own kids you're like and so Gronia's five page, six page letter, six pages can you imagine to me explaining all the ways in which I was wrong and how I thought wrong and I was I had wrong things in my soul it kind of came with the right moment because I was like well maybe that's true because I'm doing self-examination and I said well I don't want to be thin skinned so and I'm not really so I thought well that's interesting let me see what parts of this jeremiahad lamentation are true and i found a lot of it to be true i found that i was coming at this the wrong way and uh and hadn't given the victor enough credit and i think that's important when we debate online or we do this thing we're doing because it's it's you're going to end up doing things where you know if we have a semi-final it's bulls versus stormers one of us is going to have a sore arse and um we have to still keep our brain together and still maintain friendships. There's far too much fracture in the world. So what I did is I just took Ronya's words on a level and I assumed they were in good faith.

I didn't have to. I could have assumed they were in bad faith. I could have taken every 50-50 and said, ah, that's not fair. But I went and I tried to do that and that was my simple response to her. Very cryptic, actually.

But one of my things I'm trying to work on is not to be cryptic. So I said, fair play. I can grow. You made some good points. That's really what I said in response to a six-page letter.

But the six-page letter had more in it. It was about how wonderful she thinks this show is and how she's come to rely on it, not with Bernard Jackman and Rugby Pod. That's the other one. This is the one she looks to. And so it stung her personally, and I thought, I can see that.

If you actually start to like a show, you think they're fair-minded, and then they excoriate your own team, you're like, you know that's not fun and fair play she reached out and took the time to do it well the way she did it ended up having a conversation because then i thought nah i need to give her more than that so then i explained my thinking and it turned out that she's going to come on the show which is amazing because you know in this sort of older than 40 year old largely certain kind of male presence that we have in podland it's quite nice to to reach out beyond that and have a bit more organic diversity. We're not doing contrived diversity. We're just doing because people are interested. And so she's agreed, and she's actually not put any boundaries on it. We're just going to talk about a Galway girl's journey through rugby, probably GAA, curling, life, and then how she comes to live five blocks from you.

What's that? That's the more amazing part. If you've ever heard somebody speak Afrikaans with an Irish accent. Watch out for this one. I mean, I was blown away and she just lives down the road from me.

Can you believe it? This lady from Galway married to a South African. I'm so looking forward to that one. Honestly, we've been having a go at each other in the WhatsApp group for a bit now. And I'm being painted as a stereotype of a safari suit and long socks and everything.

And you just, you know, you just bought into it. I mean, really, where's the fence of your partner? The comb of the sock. That's the detail you need. The broil cream.

It's so thick that it just slides out. No, no, yeah. All right, listen, we have to move on to Yu's newfound stardom. Stormus fandom, he's been trying to do damage control, I think, you know, putting out tweets and stuff about Sasha doing this and Sasha doing that. Do you think he's now eating humble pie?

Has he seen the light or have Stormus brainwashed him, as some of our friends said? Yeah, and he has an interesting video that he's developed. It's true. It's not really a surprise. The Stormus used a blindside quite a bit.

and one of the blindside attacks they use is so silky smooth that you'd think that these guys have been doing it for a long time, maybe since schools. Whoops, yes, 9-10. When Imi Khan and Sasha Feinberg and Gomazulu are on this field at the same time, they are just doing things they've been doing for a long time. They're both from the same school, from the same area. And the blindside attack when you have a very quick nine and let me just say it, a big physical and quick 10, because that's what Sasha's developed into.

He's still growing into his body, guys. Do you see his arms? I mean, instead of always saying that he's like Dan Carter, let's talk about Henry Honeyball. So let's talk about a physical 10, what a physical 10 does on the field, what it changes. Dan Bigger sometimes in traffic with his own reclaims.

Andre Pollard in World Cups having some of the best carry stats that you'd imagine, breaking the line, busting tackles. it's really cool to have a 10 that doesn't mind contact and we'll take it in there first of all when he has one-on-ones like with adam hasting the man who never stops talking i mean he sat him down he's he's he literally looked at the guy and said oh it's just you you know maybe he said it too i hope he did and um and that's that's a weapon so i think hugh is looking at this differently now and and and i think he's onto something in the sense that he's a very different 10 maybe that's the point that we should agree on where i've disagreed with you on is the um to me the criticism of the stormers along some lines it just ignores the fact that they're on top of the table right now so and it was always thus i mean they just had to take care of conduct and they'd be clear they'd be they'd be points clear they'd have everything in their destiny that's how good a season it's been because we're getting too caught up in the top line and we're not looking about the the debits we have the credits and the debits and then there's a margin there okay so the profit margin for the stormers has always been about making sure we don't descend into goof troopery we don't just fall in love with the attack and every time this season we've had a bad moment it's because we went to we attacked too much we we were too our ruck was too quick um we started tossing the ball around to nobody or to somebody in the wrong colors And so I think what you looking at is an actual game plan that designed for this group of people for these players at this moment and it it not uh it's not just random davis name on you know i think we're gonna have him on our pod coming up down the line uh can speak to this maybe and maybe maybe even the person that uh that hugh's having such an issue with will be on but but i think it's it's we should get you on that thing stay tuned but there is a method to the madness and let me just say that there's uh 11 other coaches and teams in the irk that would like to be where the stormers are so before we get so critical about it come on this is the game this is how it works but on a technical basis i do think there was a shape to the stormers attack that was having trouble in the red zone that's clear you know the stuttering the inability to get over the line against too long it's so big moments it is it is the work on and then and nobody in stormers land is stupid they're all they all know that and so it's that's the kind of thing you can fine tune and maybe also analytics really helps here because i think this is where you want to look at the whole season a lot of reps and if you're going to run into to teams like the Pools and maybe Glasgow or Leinster, it's going to be these fine moments. And I think putting Sasha, putting Willemse, and putting guys like Paul De Villiers in the right spot at the right time, Storms can beat anybody. If they're in the wrong shape, wrong time, they can lose to anybody. So they proved both of those things.

You know what I caught myself doing this weekend, and I wrote about it as well, but I said, I'm a bull supporter but I felt empathy for the Stormers but more than that I actually started watching the Stormers and one thing I did notice for example was Paul De Vilias and remember Dobbo said two years ago he was tackled back and he's just improved so much I could start seeing it now it's an interesting thing and actually what that's I want to you know raise your own backsides a little bit yes we're trying to do yes you know teach people things I learn something new every single day speaking to Neil the Brain speaking to Dobbo speaking to Jan Ockerman you'll see where else got lined up um little australia is coming up soon if everything works out still i must find myself to follow up on that but you know i like that when i when i actually learn something and i can it makes me a better i don't know rugby follow you must i'm not a i'm not a coach or anything but i want to understand what's going on that field and i noticed that specifically did you see that as well yeah and what's nice is it shows you the game inside the game so if you go back to the episode if you haven't seen it, and if you haven't, watch it again because it helps our numbers. Darbo's talking about the, and Dion Farid also talking about the ability to survive the clean. So you have a breakdown and there's a sort of magic three seconds. Somewhere in those three seconds, the referee will declare a rock has been formed. Somewhere in those three seconds, the referee might coach you off the ball and say you were too late.

And then somewhere in those three seconds or two seconds beyond that, there's going to be an adjudication of whether you survive the clean. And if you don't, then you have no further parts. You've got to stop. If you do, the referee is reaching to the whistle. He's getting the whistle out.

He's going to blow. That's such a critical part of the game because it can erase 20 beautiful phases. If you have a pilfer on the field, a premier pilfer, so the Rory Dodge type or Paul de Villiers, Brownis-Fourri, back in the day, guys like David Pocock could erase an entire, it's almost like you could lose the game and win the match. And so it's fascinating. I think if you get enough information about it, you'll start watching the clean and you won't just be looking for the carry and the outer back.

You were looking for how that clean works and how interesting it is inside. watch an inside cleaner watch an outside cleaner watch if they're going inside than outside or outside than inside watch the lanes of the clean start to look at people's success at the clean and you'll start to have a you'll have another set of things to watch one way is fun is if you were watching game that you don't care about sometimes is to watch a player that you might care about so if you don't have any connection with the stormers watch paul de villiers watch dion free see what they do on on arrival and how they try to swing the gate you know get somewhere cemented somewhere here where the referee's looking but then the legs are flying around like on the pommel horse you know dion free was a gymnast so is norman laker the defense coach you know can they control their body i think what you see with paul is that his base is so much lower now. He gets so down, down so set, almost like when you see those sumo wrestlers get in a crouch before they hit each other, then it's super hard to clean him off because he's not much. He's not huge. He doesn't weigh a lot, so his mass is not going to keep him there.

It's going to be the configuration of how he puts his limbs and how he puts his knees and his arses down really low, and it's just really hard to clean him without being illegal, and that's what he's trying to do is you know play a game where he dares you to come in and and get pinged the other way you know off your feet i want to talk to you about the area index i'm not sure how much time we've got left but um before we do that just talk about this upcoming weekend i'm not talking about the challenge cup to me that's a nothing tournament but lainsa to lawn is a big game and border big pegless versus bath it's another big game and they well i don't know to learn i I can't remember, but these are four of the best teams in the world. They also feature prominently on the Harry Index. What does the Harry Index look like this week? Yeah, in the Harry Index, Toulon is not even on there. They've had a very shaky season, but they've risen for their occasion right when they need to.

On the other hand, Leinster has also had a shaky season. They fall out, they drop out of the Harry Index. I'm not a believer. So as weird as this sounds, I could see both of those being upsets. I could actually see Johan van Kran's people, his boys, taking this because they have the exact right shape at number three on the index to take down number one.

Ooh, I've got number one barely, just barely. They have not looked crisp lately. So I think the distance between one, two, three, and four is very tight. So the way I've got it is Bordeaux, UBB at number one barely. I've got the Saints rising at number two, just ahead of Bath.

And then I've got at four, Toulouse, who lost that narrow squeaker against Bordeaux, but in recent times have looked like they're proper to lose again. So there's nothing between those top four teams. It'll be sorted out. It's going to be sorted out. It's about to be sorted out.

I don't know how much Saints have, but they're playing very happy rugby, very good club rugby. They're dangerous in the Prem. but Johan's very motivated to get the double. He has the double a year ago, but it was with Challenge. This is the ultimate double.

If he was to win the Premiership and the Champions Cup, it would put him in such rarefied air. The debate between Johan and Franco of next best SAFA coach is settled for the time being then. I mean, just unbelievable. And you could say that he had unlimited resources and Franco had such limited resources. and that would be fair, but you still have to do something with it.

You have to be involved in two competitions and get to the final week of both, which is what it looks like both probably do. It'd be amazing. Now, that being said, we know that sports is cruel. Look at Jake White. What if he gets to the final and loses?

Then suddenly he'll have that knock on him. You have all the resources, but you didn't get over the line. so Bordeaux, Saints, Bath, Salus and then number five I have the Mighty Mighty Hurricanes. We just did an episode, we're still working on this sort of series about all the Kiwi teams and we're not sure how we're going to unwrap it but it's sort of ahead of the greatest rivalry tour is what are the Canes? What are the Chiefs?

What are the Blues looking like? Who are these teams now? We kind of always follow the Satyrs but they're kind of off now and they're not the Landers so we want to have a real fan from each one and Hurricanes just look like a really, really good team. They have big names in there, obviously. Cameron Roygaard, Jordi Barrett, Duplassie Cariffi, who had a wonderful teary tribute by family for his landmark game.

And then right behind them, what an intriguing match that would be, Hurricanes versus Stormers. Number six, Stormers storm back in with a statement win and show everyone what could be, what might be, what probably has been the story of the season is they're playing a bit over their heads. Stormers are a tough team to play. When they're on their day, when they really mean it, they are a difficult team to play. It's almost like playing a very awkward boxer or tennis player where you think maybe you're better than them, but then you end up having a hard time playing them.

Right behind them, the Chiefs, who are also a proper team. And this feels almost like old Super Rugby. Hurricanes, Stormers, Chiefs. But then we go down to number eight, Glasgow in a bit of a slide. It could be arrested.

They could bring this right. There's no one like Franco Smith in rallying the troops, in getting them to believe in themselves. Wonderful stories coming from all over the place about what a good man, what a, what's the right word? He can reach anybody. It doesn't require him to be another Freistock guy that he just knows from, you know, folkways.

He can deal with someone from Tonga. It doesn't matter, you know. Speaking of Tonga, I had a great time with the Prime Minister of Tonga a week ago. This goes into the file of what is Harry's life. But we met the Prime Minister of Tonga at a meeting, at a dinner, and he has such plans for that island, for that archipelago of 70 islands.

And, you know, all power to them. all these teams have south pacific pacifica players on them it's it's crazy the only the only teams that don't have them are south african teams um so number nine lions and people from the lions are very excited about being the harry index and i'm chuffed about them thinking it's a it's a big thing because you know it's an unheralded um humble um what is it called it is called incessantly subjective oh inherently subjective and conscious and consciously objective every week it's a different one so i forget my own taglines and then everyone laughed at me for having montpellier in the harry index who's you know who's who's giggling now they are a proper team they took care of some some business in top 14 so that's the top that's the top 10 and notable absences the bulls and leinster looking in from the outside if i had to put them down there they'd be in the top 15 maybe top 12. so you know these next couple weeks are going to be huge there's something about Leinster that's really annoying if they manage to pull this right and we have Pat McCary back on and he's going to be joking with us. But they also are in line for an incredible double. But that's the point, they're off the top 10 but they're in line for a double.

I just think that might be the problem though. So where to put their focus, that's the problem. I think they're too good for us. They're very snooty South Dublin Donnybrook boys. so they can be even more obnoxious I'm quoting they think it's got to be the Champions Cup slumming in the urk it's beneath them I think they might catch them this time interesting anyway thank you for that, it was a jam-packed episode, I appreciate it I was missing this about them and we're going to have to do this a bit more often, but we have so many people who want to talk to us in Lackaracky Park that we have to accommodate them I'm surprised we have to pay thanks Harry, I'm just kidding people don't take me seriously Thank you.

Cheers, Elyth. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.

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