Rory O'Connor

Last year, they left it to the final day to secure top eight European qualification and playoff spots against Benetton and then went out in a penalty shoot against the Sharks.

But if you keep giving yourself a mountain to climb at this time of year,

you're eventually going to run out of road some year.

It might not be this year, they might pull it together, but they're dicing with danger every year.

They're putting themselves in high-stress scenarios.

It often brings out the best in them, but every year their squad is losing one or two experienced players.

There's no Peter O'Mahony this year.

He's been so important at this time of the year over the last couple of seasons.

You look back to the team that won the URC in 2023, so many of those players have either moved on or retired.

of the best players in that team, of the most important kind of contributors to that side.

And the responsibility is falling on a diminishing set of kind of key players and leaders.

One of whom is Jack Crowley, who joins the group this week.

Tideburn will play a huge role in the next number of weeks.

And I wonder how they'll use them with the Challenge Cup because this is becoming very squeaky bum time, especially if they lose in Pretoria.

As Dennis Leamy did say, they came into the weekend in sixth and they left the weekend in sixth.

But you can't really wave away a 45-0 hammering at the hands of the Sharks and the way the team kind of fell apart in the last five, ten minutes of that game.

The last three minutes even.

Yeah, but the conditions were difficult and it was a tough outing.

And look, Kings Park is a tough place to play when the Sharks get on top of you, but that is worrying.

So Clay McMillan has an unbelievable job in his hands to try and pull this back together in what is his first year.