How all four Irish provinces can make the URC knockouts

Nathan Johns· Host0:00

[upbeat music] Hello. Welcome along to the Counter Rugby podcast, brought to you by The Irish Times in partnership with Oak Energy. Nathan Johns here with John O'Sullivan on the way to talk through another busy weekend of rugby. Ireland women play in the Aviva for the first time in a standalone fixture. They've sold over 30,000 tickets. As things stand, comfortably a new record crowd expected for that team. They play Scotland in their final Six Nations clash. Ulster are at home to Glasgow, and Connacht are away to Edinburgh on Friday night. Both of those are crucial contests as both those sides look to crack the top eight and the European places in the URC. Uh, Munster, later in the weekend, host the Lions, while Leinster at home to the Ospreys. So without further ado, here is John to preview everything that's happening. John O'Sullivan, hello. Uh, welcome back. You are at the Aviva on Sunday, I believe. Uh, 30,000 tickets have been sold for Ireland's clash against Scotland. No title on the line per se, but it's safe to say there's a very significant sense of occasion around this. We were just talking beforehand. Last time Ireland played a match, a women's match in the Aviva, I'm sure it was well-intentioned, but they tagged it on to after the men's Six Nations match against Italy in 2014, and that was Brian O'Driscoll's last home appearance. So everybody was caught up in the pageantry of that, and I think the figure for the amount of people that stayed behind to watch the women