RaboDirect Pro12 : Round five – A weekend of upsets

The fifth round of the RaboDirect Pro12 started with four matches on Friday night and the remaining two fixtures in the round being played on Saturday. This round yielded numerous surprise results, so much so that we only managed to correctly predict one out of the six results.

The first game completed on Friday night ended with what was arguably a surprise win for the Dragons against Edinburgh.  Edinburgh went into the game without influential captain Greg Laidlaw and stalwart hooker Ross Ford and prop WP Nel amongst others and were playing away from home. However, the Dragons had only won one of their Pro12 games thus far and not only did they manage to win but they did so convincingly

Ulster were the second team to surprise with an incredible away win against Cardiff Blues, scoring seven tries in the process. One can only admire this performance from Ulster who gave their all at the end of must have been an emotionally draining few weeks. This all achieved away from home against an in form Cardiff Blues team.

Sanity prevailed in Glasgow as the Glasgow Warriors secured a narrow win against bottom of the table Zebre. Glasgow had made many changes to their team and struggled as expected initially as they went 13 points behind early on before they got onto the score board. In the end though, Glasgow pulled through with a good period in part of the first half that yielded three tries for them.  The only points in the second half came from the boot with a penalty apiece for Glasgow and Zebre.

The match between Connacht and Leinster also yielded a surprise result with a very comfortable win by Connacht in which they even managed to secure a bonus point as well for scoring five tries while limiting Leinster to scoring two penalties.

The Ospreys beat Munster on Saturday and although it was thought  beforehand that this would be a tough game to predict, that Munster would ultimately be too strong for Ospreys.

On reflection the result may not have been a major surprise considering the Ospreys were at home and Munster did not start with their strongest pack. However, the margin of victory was somewhat surprising. It seems as if Munster’s task was made harder by poor discipline with Tommy O’Donnell being sent to the sin bin in the first half and hooker Damian Varley getting a red card, for apparently kicking, six minutes from time.

The last game of the weekend also yielded a surprise win for Franco Smith’s Treviso against Welsh outfit Scarlets who were on top of the log before the round started. Treviso’s Di Bernardo kicked over a penalty from the halfway line in the 80^th minute to secure a win by two points.

Full list of results

Table after round five