It’s that time of year again.
The season is almost on us and, like last year, we need to look at our strength-of-schedule rating for the season ahead — where we have to bank points, where we have to pull something out of the bag, and where we need to cling on for the bare minimum — with a view to getting what we want; namely, a home knockout game and ideally a home semi-final and final.
Have a read of the chart below, but make sure to check out the explainer first.
How to read the chart
Every team starts with a score out of 100, worked out from the last two URC seasons: where they finished in the table, plus a bonus for how far they went in the playoffs. Last season counts for 60% of it, the season before for 40%. Leinster come out around 97. Zebre are down at 6. We’re on 55.
That’s the team. Then there’s the fixture, because a score on its own doesn’t tell you much — playing the Stormers in Limerick and playing them in Cape Town are not the same job. So every game gets adjusted for the circumstances:
- at home, knock 7 off — but only for an average opponent (see below)
- away, add 7, same caveat
- away in South Africa, add 3 more for the trip, and 2 again on the highveld
- when a South African side comes here, take 4 more off, because they travel badly too
- in a Test window, add 3, since both squads are missing players and the game gets harder to call
That 7 isn’t the same for everyone. It’s the league average — and the real figure, taken from the home and away tables of the last two seasons, is 6.8 points a game, which is about as stable as anything in this sport (7.1 last season, 6.5 the year before). But some grounds are worth far more than others. Glasgow’s home-to-away swing is 1.58 times the league average, the Sharks 1.52, the Lions 1.47, Leinster 1.46. At the other end, Connacht are 0.50, the Scarlets 0.55, Cardiff 0.56 — and we’re 0.62, which is a harder line to swallow than it looks. So each opponent’s venue adjustment is scaled by their own number rather than a flat 7.
What you’re left with is a difficulty number for each of the 18 games.
The scale in English: about 4 points equals one place in the league table. So “home advantage is 7” is just another way of saying that playing someone at Thomond makes them behave like a team a place and a half further down the table — and a good deal more than that if it’s Glasgow or Leinster you’re hosting.
The number that matters is 55 — our own score. Any game above that line, we’re the underdog on paper. Below it, we should be winning. On the settings as they stand that’s five games clearly above the line, twelve clearly below, and the Lions at Ellis Park sitting almost exactly on it — a genuine coin flip.
The third tab: is our draw actually rough? Every other club’s 18 games go through exactly the same model, so we can see whether the fixture computer did us a favour or not. There’s one wrinkle. You can’t simply compare average difficulty, because nobody has to play themselves — Leinster never face Leinster, so their number comes out flattering no matter what draw they got. The Rel column fixes that. It measures each club’s real schedule against what an average draw from the other fifteen would have looked like. Positive means a harder card than they deserved, negative means a kind one.
We come out 7th hardest of 16. Marginally rough, nothing to complain about. But the shape of it is the interesting part: our home slate is the 4th hardest in the league, because Glasgow, the Bulls and Leinster all have to come to us — while our away slate is the 3rd easiest, because the draw sent us to Parma and Newport rather than Glasgow and Pretoria. The hard games land where we’re most likely to win them, and the travel is soft. Given that leagues are decided on the road rather than at home, that’s close to the best distribution we could have asked for.
And if you disagree, the sliders are there. Think Thomond is worth more than 7? Push it up. Reckon last season told us more than the one before it? Slide the weighting to 100% and watch the Sharks climb. The whole chart redraws.
Munster 2026/27 — Strength of Schedule
Fixture difficulty from the TRK two-season strength index (regular-season rank + playoff bonus, weighted 60% 2025/26 ⁄ 40% 2024/25, scaled 0–100), then adjusted for venue using each club’s own measured home⁄away split, plus the South Africa tour, altitude and Test windows. Drag the sliders — both tabs redraw.
Season difficulty index–Home avg – · Away avg – · Munster baseline –
Hardest fixture–
Top-2 points target682nd-place cut: 68, 66, 68, 63 (avg 66.3)
Top-4 points target~624th-place cut: 63, 65, 59, 59 (avg 61.5)
Home
Away
Away in South Africa
✈ Test window (higher variance)
Bands: Winnable <15 · Manageable 15–39 · Tricky 40–59 · Hard 60–79 · Very hard 80+
Budget total–Target for a home semi-final: 68 ·
Implied record–
Model expectation–What the difficulty numbers alone predict, before any targeting
Overperformance needed–Budget minus expectation — the points you have to find
Rd Fixture Date Diff
Instruction Target
Season total
5 Bank the try bonus
4 Win it
1 Contest, take the losing bonus
0 Write it off
How the budget is set. Each fixture is measured against our own rating (the baseline
on the first tab). A game 30+ clear of that line is a five-pointer; 10–30 clear is a win with
try-bonus upside; anything from 12 the wrong side up to 10 clear is line-ball and we target the
win regardless; a home game 12–20 the wrong side is a swing we back ourselves in; beyond that
we’re hunting the losing bonus, and beyond 40 we take nothing. Move any slider and the
instructions re-sort themselves.
One editorial override. On default settings the rule budgets a losing bonus at home to
Leinster, because that’s what the numbers say. The argument in the article is that we have to
win that game — and doing so is worth +3 on this ledger, which is our cushion if a
Test-window game slips.
Our schedule ranks–hardest of 16, once you correct for nobody playing themselves
Our home slate–
Our away slate–
Hardest draw in the league–
# Team Avg
Harder ← neutral draw → easier Rel
Why the last column, not the first. Raw average difficulty flatters the good sides,
because nobody has to play themselves — Leinster never face Leinster, so their number comes
out low whatever the draw. The Rel column fixes that by comparing each club’s actual
18-game schedule against the average of the other fifteen. Positive means a harder card than a
neutral draw would have given them.
All 144 fixtures of the 2026/27 season are run through the same model as our own, with the same
sliders, so this table redraws along with everything else. South Africa travel and altitude are
applied only to sides who aren’t already there or already at altitude.
Adjust the assumptions
Points targets — how they’re set
| Rd | Fixture | Date | Diff | Instruction | Target |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Season total | |||||
One editorial override. On default settings the rule budgets a losing bonus at home to Leinster, because that’s what the numbers say. The argument in the article is that we have to win that game — and doing so is worth +3 on this ledger, which is our cushion if a Test-window game slips.
| # | Team | Avg | Harder ← neutral draw → easier | Rel |
|---|
All 144 fixtures of the 2026/27 season are run through the same model as our own, with the same sliders, so this table redraws along with everything else. South Africa travel and altitude are applied only to sides who aren’t already there or already at altitude.
| Season | 2nd place (pts) | 4th place (pts) |
|---|---|---|
| 2022/23 | Ulster — 68 | Glasgow — 63 |
| 2023/24 | Bulls — 66 | Glasgow — 65 |
| 2024/25 | Bulls — 68 | Glasgow — 59 |
| 2025/26 | Leinster — 63 | Bulls — 59 |
| Average | 66.3 → aim 68 to be safe | 61.5 → target ~62 |
Because those multipliers are measured from actual results, they already contain most of the travel and altitude effect on visiting sides, so the South Africa and altitude sliders are set low — they cover only the residual load on our own touring squad, not the venue itself. A discount still applies when a South African side comes to Thomond Park⁄Virgin Media Park, and a premium in rounds where both squads are likely missing internationals (R5, R11, R12, R13), flagged ✈ as harder to predict rather than strictly harder. Fixtures per the released 2026/27 URC list (subject to change; Leinster away venue TBC).
First, I’ll get to my assumptions.
I’ve marked the Leinster games — home and away — down for 1 point as it stands. I know that last year we earned six, but that was something of an outlier based on recent history. Hopefully next season it’s ten points, but I can’t make a proper SoS table with that as an assumption.
In the last few years, the top two cutoff has been 66 points, with Leinster acting as something of an outlier last season at 63. The top four has stayed pretty consistent at 62 points. So, if we want either of those things — top two or top four — those are the baselines that we have to target. As we saw last season, a bonus-point win in Croke Park against Leinster is certainly satisfying but, from a narrative and table perspective, it was five points earned early in the season, and that’s about it.
By mid-May, it was as close to empty calories as you can get.
If we’re to get to the top four, at least, this season has to be more consistent. Last season, we started incredibly well, and that momentum practically carried us through a deeply disappointing back half of the season, during which European qualification was only confirmed in the last round, with a nervy win over the Lions.
Looking at the difficulty of the schedule and, without a ball being carried in anger yet, the last two seasons suggest our points baseline is 53, which would have been enough for the lower reaches of the top eight in the last two seasons, so we’ll need a ten-point overperformance for the projected top four, and a fourteen-point overperformance for the top two based on historic trends.
Of course, how everyone else is going is deeply relevant.
Last season, four winning bonus points (just one more try) against Dragons, Connacht, Cardiff and Zebre would have pushed us up to 59 points. One more penalty against Glasgow in January would have been enough for 60 points. That would have put us in fourth place — a home quarter-final.
But last season was something of an outlier, itself.
| Season | 1st | 2nd | 4th | 8th | 1st→8th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022/23 | 79 | 68 | 63 | 48 | 31 |
| 2023/24 | 68 | 66 | 65 | 50 | 18 |
| 2024/25 | 76 | 68 | 59 | 48 | 28 |
| 2025/26 | 65 | 63 | 59 | 54 | 11 |
Last season was not a normal season, and we should be careful not to build this season’s targets on top of those assumptions.
The gap between first and eighth was eleven points — the guts of three wins. In the three seasons before it, that gap was 31, 18 and 28. And it squeezed from both ends at once last season. First place came in more than nine points below where it normally lands, while eighth came in more than five points above. Seven teams finished within six points of the cut.
That pulls in two directions, and they ended up pulling against each other. Leinster taking second on 63 makes the top two look softer than the 66-to-68 we’d normally aim for to guarantee a home run in the knockouts. But eighth needing 54, when it has historically been nearer 48, means the floor came up to meet everybody. Last season you needed more points to get into the play-offs and fewer to finish near the top of them. A repeat would make our stated target of 68 comfortable and the qualification we scraped last May a great deal more nervous than it already was.
Which is why I’ve treated last season as the outlier rather than the new normal, and why the baselines below lean on the four-season averages instead of the one still freshest in the memory.
Ulster look quite low on this chart, relative to their perceived performance last season, but outside of any ideas of “momentum” or other perceptions, they were pretty average for most of the season. Ulster’s best run of performances in the URC came between the end of November and the start of January, when they could load up relative to their opponents because of a soft Challenge Cup draw, and when the balance was shifted by either test call-ups or meeting a team at full strength with no externalities, their performance levels plummeted.
So it’s worth keeping that in mind.
The Thomond Park Issue
I think it’s fair to say that Thomond Park isn’t really a fortress in a practical sense. Sure, as far as rugby stadia go, it’s got more aura than the vast majority of club venues, but it’s been a while since it was a proper graveyard for opposition teams.
The record itself doesn’t look like the problem when you consider wins and losses. We’ve won 13 of 18 at home across the last two seasons — seven from nine last year, six from nine the year before. That’s fifth and seventh in the league, respectively, which is not great, but not that bad either. I mean, if we want to get back to being a feared team in this league and beyond, 13 from 18 needs to be closer to 17 from 18, but that’s a different story.
It’s the margins that give the game away once you look a bit deeper. On home points difference, we were ninth and tenth. A team winning seven of nine at Thomond Park and Virgin Media Park, and still coming out mid-table for home dominance, is telling you something: we win, but we don’t win dominantly.
It’s an attacking problem rather than a defensive one. At home we scored 21.9 points a game last season and 24.4 the year before — eleventh and tenth in the league. Only the Ospreys, Edinburgh, Cardiff, the Dragons and Zebre managed less on their own patch last year, and none of those sides finished within twelve points of us. Defensively we were excellent: third-fewest points conceded at home last season, sixth-fewest the year before. So the picture is a tight, well-organised, low-scoring home team grinding out four-point wins.
Which is fine, until you consider how important bonus points are in this league, and how not earning them last season against Dragons, Zebre, Cardiff and Connacht cost us.
That’s where the aura argument falls away a bit, even before you consider Europe. If you measure how much a ground actually changes a team — the swing between their home and away performance — ours comes to 0.62 of the league average, fourth-lowest of the sixteen. Glasgow’s Scotstoun is 1.58. Kings Park is 1.52, Ellis Park 1.47, the Aviva 1.46. Whatever Thomond Park does to a visiting side, it demonstrably does less of it than those places do to theirs. That has to change.
That said, almost everyone wins pretty regularly at home, both in this league and worldwide. That’s not what gets you up the table in the URC, anyway.
Run the numbers on the last two seasons, and the link between a good home record and a high finish looks overwhelming — home form on its own accounts for about 84% of where you finish. Except that’s close to a trick question, because a league table is home points plus away points added together. Both halves have to matter.
The better question is what separates the top four from the pack chasing them.
At home, almost nothing. The top four averaged 7.75 wins from nine home games in each of the last two seasons. The sides in fifth to twelfth managed 6.5 and 6.0. There’s barely a game and a half of a difference.
Away, it’s a chasm. The top four won 4.5 and 5.75 from nine on the road. Fifth to twelfth: 2.6 and 2.5.
The cleanest illustration is last season’s record between the Sharks and Stormers. They both won exactly seven of nine at home. The Sharks then won one away game all season; the Stormers won five. The Sharks finished tenth on 46 points. The Stormers finished third on 60 points. Seven places apart, off identical home records.
That’s also why the away column is the better forecasting tool. If you want one figure from last season to predict this one, away points difference does the job better than home form does — and by a clear margin, too. Home form is important, but not that important, because everyone’s numbers there look respectable at the very least
What it means for us
We won seven at home and four away last season and came fifth. The 68/62-point budget for top two or top four on the chart needs a lot of wins. The home half is ordinary enough — it’s simply what a top-four side does. The away half has been managed twice in two seasons: Leinster and the Bulls in 2024/25, who finished first and second on 76 and 68.
The target isn’t fanciful. But it’s worth being blunt about what it actually is — a top-two-away campaign. Ulster, Zebre, Connacht, the Dragons, Cardiff, the Lions and Edinburgh all have to be won on the road. A top-four campaign can afford a losing bonus point or two. That’s where the season gets decided; not in the games at home.
The Schedule, Relative
Here’s the thing about strength of schedule — it’s pretty meaningless in isolation. Last season, a difficult home game against Ulster towards the end of the season, relative to the context of the league to that point, was turned into an easy five points due to issues external to the league itself. Ulster had a European final to budget minutes for, so any preseason logic went out the window. Even then, everyone plays 18 games, everyone gets nine at home and nine away, and every set of supporters on earth will tell you their draw was the hard one. So I ran all 144 fixtures of next season through the same model to find out.
We come out 7th hardest of 16.
Before you take that at face value, there’s more boring context. You can’t just rank clubs by average opponent difficulty, because nobody has to play themselves. Leinster never face Leinster, so their schedule looks kind, no matter what the computer did to them. Even then, they’ll have a slightly weaker squad this season, so externalities outside of their control might turn bankable five-pointers into something more damaging.
The fix is to measure each club’s actual 18 games against what an average draw would have handed them, and on that basis we’re +1.8. Marginally rough. Nothing worth complaining about.
The shape of it is where it gets interesting.
Our home slate is the 4th hardest in the league. Glasgow, the Bulls and Leinster all have to come to Limerick, which is three of the four best sides in the competition turning up at Thomond Park. That’s objectively difficult, before you consider how up to speed both sides will be, and that we have to play Leinster there every year regardless. It looks like a rough draw, right out the gate.
It isn’t, because our away slate is the 3rd easiest. Fourteenth of sixteen. The draw sent us to Parma and Newport instead of Scotstoun and Loftus, and that matters more than anything else I’m going to waffle about here.
I went back through the last two seasons and split every club’s record into home and away. What separates the top four from the pack isn’t home form — the table is decided on the road. And we’ve been handed the third-softest road in the league.
Compare that to the sides around us. Connacht drew the 3rd hardest schedule, Ulster the 5th. The Stormers are 2nd, the Lions 1st, the Sharks 4th. Every South African side and both of our nearest Irish rivals got a worse card than we did. Cardiff, who finished sixth, got the kindest draw in the competition at −3.3.
None of that wins you anything in August or October, as we found last season.
But it does mean that if we finish outside the top four this season, our schedule won’t be the reason.
