Business time - Everything up for grabs on URC run-in

There won't be much unity amongst the BKT United Rugby Championship fraternity on Friday, 24 May.

The EPCR Challenge Cup final in London will be of keen interest to roughly half of the teams in the URC, even if only one of them are competing in it.

The Sharks will be the URC's representative in the final at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, but it’s very likely the supporters of the Lions, Ospreys, Benetton, Edinburgh, Connacht, Ulster and even the Stormers will be donning a cherry and white jersey and tipping a glass of cider to Gloucester that evening.

If the Sharks do lift the trophy later this month, it will make an already bottlenecked qualification race for the Investec Champions Cup all the more congested.

As it stands, the top eight teams in the URC advance to next season’s Champions Cup, but that would be reduced to seven if the Sharks pinch one of those qualification spots through winning the Challenge Cup.

With three rounds of the regular season left to play, the play-off picture is a wonderful and chaotic mess.

Of the current top eight, only Glasgow, Leinster, Munster and the Bulls look like being safe bets to be playing rugby in June, with the quartet jostling for position inside the top four over the remaining three weekends.

Below them is a cross-continental game of musical chairs. Ahead of Round 16, just six points separate the Stormers in fifth from the Lions way back in 11th. The bedlam can be neatly summed up by Ulster’s home win over Cardiff back in April, where Richie Murphy’s side dropped from eighth to 10th in the ladder, despite picking up a victory.

Results in recent weeks have been as predictable as a mouse in a maze. Munster’s maximum return from their two-game tour of South Africa came after the Lions