Who’s hot and who’s not: Fijian Drua make history, James O’Connor’s brilliance and Sergio Parisse misses out

Utter dominance from Edinburgh and Ulster: Both teams delivered a crushing result to their respective opponents, Connacht and Cardiff. Edinburgh slaughtered the Irish province 56-8 with Emiliano Boffelli, Dave Cherry, Blair Kinghorn, Ramiro Moyano, Glen Young and Ben Vellacott all scoring once with Henry Immelman going over twice. Meanwhile, Ulster delivered a similarly humiliating defeat to the Welsh capital side with the final score being 48-12. Returning from the national team, Robert Baloucoune scored two of the seven tries, leaving Cardiff scratching their head for answers defensively. Those two sides are very much in the mix alongside Leinster and Munster, who were similarly excellent against Benetton and Dragons respectively.

Ulster are back at the summit of the #URC, while Edinburgh thrashed Connacht #ULSvCAR

The match reports from Friday's encounters. #EDIvCON https://t.co/RzucJJeysd

— Planet Rugby (@PlanetRugby) March 4, 2022

Wow! What a performance from the Pacific Islanders to claim their first ever victory in Super Rugby. We probably weren’t alone in thinking that it would be a long season for Fijian Drua but they have arguably confounded those pre-season predictions already by defeating the Rebels on Friday. They were excellent, particularly after going 14-0 down in the first half, and ended up securing a thoroughly deserved 31-26 triumph. Hopefully they can now build on this triumph and gain some more positive results, with the Reds next up for them. Not to be outdone, the Fijian Drua women’s team made it double delight on Saturday as they thumped the Rebels 66-5 in their first outing.

HISTORY!

First home game

First WIN!#StanSportAU #SuperRugbyPacific #DRUvREB pic.twitter.com/AqSywKDB9n

— Stan Sport