United Rugby Championship Round 14: All You Need to Know

The BKT United Rugby Championship playoff race is starting to come to the boil, as we head into the final five rounds of the regular season.

With just Leinster, Benetton and the Sharks still involved in the latter stages of the Champions and Challenge Cups, it means 13 of the 16 teams in the URC now have a singular focus.

For some, it's cementing their place in the top four to guarantee home advantage in the quarter-finals, while for everyone else down as far as the 11th-place Lions, there looks to be a very realistic chance of breaking into the playoffs - and securing Champions Cup rugby for next season.

Just five points separate the Johannesburg side in 11th from the Stormers up in fifth. At this stage of the season every bonus-point matters.

Both Leinster and Munster are in South Africa this week for the first of their two games on tour.

Leinster, who have left behind many of their frontline stars for the Johannesburg trip, take on the Lions at Ellis Park on Saturday, while fourth-place Munster face the third-place Bulls in the pick of this week's games.

Ulster are first up of the Irish sides, hosting Cardiff in Belfast for what is Richie Murphy's first home game in charge, while Connacht face Zebre on Saturday night in a must-win game for the province.

ONLINE

We'll have live scoring as well as reports and reaction from the games.

TV

You can see live coverage of Emirates Lions v Leinster and Vodacom Bulls v Munster from 1.30pm on Saturday on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player.

Ulster v Cardiff (Friday 7.35pm) and Connacht v Zebre (Saturday 7.35pm) are both live on TG4.

All games are also shown live on URC.tv.

WEATHER

There should be good conditions for rugby in Belfast in Friday night, with Ulster hosting the Lions. Temperatures of around