16 Questions that could define the United Rugby Championship - Ireland
Leinster finally won the league and with relative ease, but Munster, Ulster and Connacht showed signs the league's power base has moved south.
The 2025/26 URC starts this weekend and fans are wondering if it is going to bring pain or joy (spoiler: probably pain). To get things started, let’s look at the areas and storylines that might define what success and disaster will look like. Each day I will focus on one of the four divisions, starting with Ireland.
Leinster
Who is trolling whom with the Rieko Ioane signing?
If this was last year the question would have been “Can Leinster get over the line for once?” Now they have actually done it, there are not many playing related questions left to answer. They are good at pretty much everything that matter. They have a deep squad across most positions. Their coaching is top class, able to get high quality performances out of reasonable talent. They will be fine.
More fun is what will happen when Rieko Ioane lands before Christmas.
Answer 1: Rieko Ioane is trolling Johnny Sexton
Before 2024 nobody really knew that Ioane and Sexton had beef. Everyone knew there the Ireland and New Zealand squads weren’t best mates as Ireland had started to get used to beating NZ except at the World Cup where the Kiwis pointed out they were going to have to wait 4 more years (something they learned from the Aussies).
Then, in 2024, Sexton’s book came out and this passage went viral:
"After [referee Wayne] Barnes blows the final whistle, he [Ioane] says 'don’t miss your flight tomorrow. Enjoy your retirement, you [expletive].' So much for the All Blacks’ famous “no [expletive]” policy," Sexton claims in his upcoming autobiography, Obsessed, serialised in the Sunday Times.
"So much for their humility. I walk after Ioane and call him a fake-humble [expletive]." (I chose the safe for work BBC version)
Rieko didn’t respond immediately, choosing to help beat Ireland again before posting “Put that in your book.” followed by a jester image.
Leinster announced Reiko’s signing just 5 months later as if there had never been a problem. He seems pretty chilled about the potential fan response, but I’m looking foreward to seeing what he does. Will he reference Sexton when he scores? Will he attempt game winning drop goals? Or will he just walk around wearing the Leinster 10 jersey? What we do know is Sexton is already not happy about it.
Answer 2: Leinster are trolling Johnny Sexton
At what point did Leinster start talking to Ioane about the potential move? November 2024 would have been a good time as he was in Leinster. Did Leinster start recruiting him during the Sexton story? Did Caelan Doris shake hands at the end of game and say, “Fancy playing here more regularly some day? Don’t worry about the Sexton stuff - we always thought he was a bit much too.” I don’t know how this came about but it does seem a little cold.
Answer 3: Leinster are trolling the rest of the league
In 2025, Leinster hired probably the best 12 in the world and then played him whenever they felt like it. Most teams focus on playing their strongest team as much as possible, but Leinster’s resources are such that they can reserve their best players for when they feel they really need it. If the following game is a big one, don’t expect to see many of the headline acts this week.
This is particularly felt in the league, where many of the best players barely played in the league. Indeed, many of them didn’t play 320 minutes (i.e. 4 full games) during the 18 league matches, and Jordie Barrett was one of them. However, when he did play, he was easily one of the league’s best players, where he finished 11th for Relative Try Involvements per 80 minutes played1 and top 10% in Value-Added-Carries x Value-Added-Tackles2. Barrett was a Power Up that Leinster could use whenever it suited them.
Bringing in Ioane to do something similar is a real flex that the other teams cannot afford. He has not been in the greatest form in 2025, but he has the potential to have a similar impact in 2026 as Barrett just did. For Leinster, the reigning champions, to do this again just feels a bit mean. Then again, they will probably leave him on the bench for the biggest game of the season and that will give everyone else a laugh.
Munster
Can McMillan turn Munster into the new Chiefs?
The big talking points going into the season relate to leadership. Out go the Ireland greats in Peter O’Mahony and Conor Murray, and in comes Clayton McMillan as the new head coach. Will new playing leaders emerge and will McMillan change the culture either to the traditional Munster way or into something new (pundits seem divided on which is better).
When it comes to the players, it’s important to recognise how little the senior players played last season. When we look at the percentage of 2024/25 minutes that have effectively left each club, we see that Munster will be one of the more settled sides. The players that have left/retired only played 9% of the available minutes in 2024/25 and most of that was towards the end of the season. For the vast majority of last season, the club relied on the same players that are still there. Last season’s leaders will be this season’s leaders.
The bigger question is what impact McMillan will have. His former team, the Chiefs, were very successful under his watch, never finishing outside the top 4 in the league standings. Last season they did well across the statistics that matter the most:
3rd for Gainline success
2nd for line breaks that finished with a try
2nd for the number of offloads
4th for % of missed tackles that led to a try
3rd for % of opposition lineouts won
1st for % of scrums won via penalty
1st for tries scored
6th for tries from set piece
Apart from tries from set piece, the Chiefs were leaders in all of the major statistics. This was a team that attacks in each area of play whether with the ball or disrupting the opposition’s ball. When we look at the equivalent for Munster, we see there is quite a lot to work on.
11th for Gainline success
9th for line breaks that finished with a try
4th for the number of offloads
15th for % of missed tackles that led to a try
11rd for % of opposition lineouts won
9th for % of scrums won via penalty
5th for tries scored
10th for tries from set piece
It seems surprising that Munster made the playoffs at all!3 Coach McMillan will be working hard on finding ways to attack more whenever they can, something that should align with the traditional Munster culture. If he can do it then we should expect Munster to be back near the top once again. If not, we shouldn’t be surprised to see them miss the playoffs for the first time.
Connacht
Will Connacht choose a bit more substance over style?
To quote pretty much everyone, “I love the way Connacht play.” Ever since Connacht surprisingly won the league in 2016 with a “swashbuckling” style that attacked from anywhere on the pitch, rugby fans loved watching the team take risks, keep the ball alive and play at a high tempo to force gaps in the defence.
Last season, Connacht, a team that finished 13th, made the 5th most carries, 5th most offloads, 5th most metres, 4th most breaks, beat the 3rd most defenders and scored the 7th most tries. They even had the most possession. Their chosen style of play clearly stretched defences and produced great results, except for the result that matters.
Obviously defence is part of the problem—unsurprising if you finish 13th— but it is worth checking the attack is as effective as it looks. When we look at points scored per 40 minutes possession (effectively points per game if every game was 50% possession) then Connacht finished 13th with 22.5.4 It’s fine to enjoy rugby that looks good and feels like it is an attacking threat, but if the reality is isn’t that effective, then is it actually worth it?
When you look at the style in more depth there is one stat that stands out: Connacht played it wider than the first receiver 39%, a whopping 6% more than any other team. They also attempted the most passes; combined with their width, Connacht’s play risked dropped passes or turnovers due to lack of support for the carrier (there are usually few players out wide for either team). When you have one of the weakest scrums, any drops or turnovers are likely to result in loss of field position and subsequently points. Defending is a lot harder when you keep losing the advantage you have worked so hard to win.
Which leads us to the question of how will Connacht play this season. It’s brilliant that Connacht can cut through teams and score the tries that fans will enjoy seeing over and over again, an important factor for a team looking to consistently fill its new stadium. But do you know what else helps fill seats? Winning. And winning teams have a hard-nosed understanding that it is much easier to do what is needed to win than to make what you do winning. I hope Connacht will be more direct this year and build pressure by kicking for territory and playing in the right parts of the pitch; this should lead to more entries into the opposition 22 and allow fewer into their own 22. However, I’ve thought that for most of the last 10 years and they have not shown any signs of changing.
Ulster
Is there a plan B?
Last season was a disaster for Ulster. They finished 14th and outside the playoffs for the first time. Their European matches had some very on-sided scorelines, leading many commentators to question whether they belonged. Few players shone and fans had little to look forward to each week.
However, all of this was predictable and many people did. After a couple of years of cost cutting the squad had been shorn of many experienced players and replaced by young players who could only claim potential rather than proven performance. Head Coach Richis Murphy made the most of his U20 connections to attract those players, but generally he had to make do with what was already there. There was a youthful exuberance at times (if you like the recent Ireland U20 teams then you were in luck) but it was hard to see how the team could hurt bigger teams. Losing at home to Zebre in January basically guaranteed they would miss the playoffs, the quality of the performance rather than the result sounding the death knell.
When people reviewed the season, the most common conclusion was the team lacked the bulk and punch to get over the gainline or knock back the opposition. When describing the signings of Juarno Augustus and Angus Bell, the media consistently aligned their ability to dominate collisions with Ulster’s desperate need for big ball carriers. The eye test concluded Ulster were under powered, but the stats said something else.
According to Opta, Ulster came top for the proportion of carries that were dominant or carries that committed at least 2 tacklers. They were 6th best at getting over the gainline, and defensively they had the 5th highest proportion of dominant tackles. In players such as Izuchukwu, Wilson, Stockdale, McCloskey and McNabney they had players who could dominate or match the opposition physically, especially in attack, the area their new signings are meant to help with.
However, a different perspective would suggest a deeper issue. The problem is not whether Ulster can compete physically, but whether they can only compete physically. The statistics relating to the number of committed tacklers are a bit of a red herring - there is no correlation between those stats and a team’s ultimate success. What they suggest is one of two things: the team has a lot of players who are physically dominant; or the team only tries to punch holes, meaning the opposition can focus on stopping the main runners without worrying about any other forms of attack.
Ulster had by far the lowest proportion of tries from set piece (49%) and the highest proportion from turnovers (17%), revealing a team that relied on feeding off scraps rather than scoring through planned plays or moments of skill and invention. Once teams realised this, they regularly stopped Ulster scoring for 40+ minutes at a time. For Ulster to improve, they will need to make opposition teams off balanced by showing them more options.
The No.10 is central to a team’s play-making, and in Jack Murphy, Ulster have someone who showed signs of promise in 2024/25. But he has only just turned 21 and has a lot to learn about manipulating prepared defences. It is a big ask for him to develop quickly enough to control games and ask the opposition the tough questions that create holes for his teammates to exploit. Unfortunately for him and Ulster, if he doesn’t, they will be limited to trying to smash holes in defences waiting to pounce.
The big hope for Ulster is that Richie Murphy can develop a more varied gameplan that helps the team to be more than the sum of its parts, as he did with the successful Ireland U20 teams. He has young players who had some exposure to his methods before he joined and another preseason should help to embed them further. They also have a talented backline who can do a lot more than just run forward - if the forwards can produce faster ball then the fans should enjoy what they see. As always with Ulster, there is potential. Turning it into positive outcomes will be the test.
The Relative makes an allowance for the position played - wings are much more likely to score tries than props so we make an allowance for a bit fairer comparison. It does favour forwards though - Barrett was the top performing back, the next highest was Harri Millard at 27th.
I have covered VAC-VAT before. It also looks at relative performance for a player’s position but for carries and tackles. Players who are good at both should do well here, and backs and forwards do equally well.
One of the big reasons why they made it, possibly the reason, is they were good at preventing the opposition teams from reaching their 22. Munster were not particularly good at keeping the opposition out when they were in the 22, but by keeping the opposition at arm’s length for longer periods they gave themselves a chance to convert their own scores.
The Bulls were top with 30.2 followed by Leinster on 29.7. The Stormers were a more distant 3rd on 26.9.