No way will we need to win 6, last 2 seasons 11 wins has been sufficient to come sixth. 4 might be enough, 5 definitely will. Still confident.

Just looking at our run in, 4 home and 5 away games. Probably need to win all home and two away.

We know we can beat good teams at home.

4 of our 5 away games are against teams currently 8th - 11th in table.

Still a great chance of champions cup qualification.

Edinburgh's next 4 are all winnable as well so they could start to put some pressure on during the 6 Nations.

I think that Treviso and Zebre will have a big say in the 6th place spot. Both are locked into their own private battle and as shown yesterday by Treviso will be no pushovers esp at home.

Also I think that all the teams involved in the 6th/7th Conn, edinburgh,scarletts cardiff and I suspect Ulster may be dragged into (playing shite and almost lost yesterday) will all steal points from one another.

Squeaky bum time from here on in.

i have a nasty feeling it will all come down to our last game at home to Ulster.

On the other hand 4 of Scarlets next 5 matches are at home, against us, Munster, Leinster and Edinburgh. We'll definitely need the other provinces to do us a favour there, bearing in mind that Scarlets haven't lost at home in the pro12 yet this season.

Their away form is poor, not a single win, so their away matches will be key. But they play Ulster, Zebre, Dragons and Treviso away, which is hardly a killer list. Again, we'll need some help there.

We're going to need around 20 more points before the end of the season to secure 6th. We have nine games to get that. We'll need to win at least four of those and pick up some bonus points.
We have Treviso, Glasgow, Ospreys, and Ulster at home with Llanelli, Cardiff, Dragons, Munster, and Zebre away.
The three away games in Wales are key. If we win two of those we should make it - any two will do, but if we win in Llanelli it will go a long way to getting us there. We should beat Treviso at home and Zebre away. We will need a bonus point in one of those games. That leaves us needing to beat Ulster at home - that really is a crucial match. Losing bonus points or better at home to Glasgow and Ospreys and away to Munster should then see us over the line.

Lost 3 points this weekend against Edinburgh, but still 17 points better off than last season

The league is far closer this year than it has been in any other year....this is not necessarily a good thing for us

I can see us going as low as 9th.....but I think it's equally possible we could make the playoffs......actually I think it's more likely me make the playoffs than get 9th but either could happen.

We've got better and the top teams have come back to us a bit too (could barely believe how poor Osprey were today) so makes for a really exciting league....but I'd sooner have a comfy season sat in 6th

Fourdogs wrote: Winning becomes a habit and the Sportsground is becoming a place, no team will come to expecting to walk away with 4 points.

Ain't that the truth! We're fast getting to the point where losing in Galway is like losing in the RDS, it's no big deal sure nobody wins there anyway.

For the 1st time in a lot of year, I think our destiny is in our own hands and not reliant on the results of other games.
Winning becomes a habit and the Sportsground is becoming a place, no team will come to expecting to walk away with 4 points.
Success breeds success and self belief,
if the team believe they can beat any other 15 men facing them, then the story of the 2014/15 season is theirs to write.
The way we are playing at the moment, both Championship qualification for next year and this years playoffs, are not the pipe dream they were 5 months ago.

swift4prez wrote: Took me awhile to do this but the math is worked out.
Last season there was a massive 20 points between us and scarlets
This season we're +16 from last season and scarlets are on -4.

So if connacht and scarlets match there results from last season from the remaining games, we'll both finish on 51 points, and we finish 6th with 10 wins and scarlets in 7th spot with 9 wins

Last season we got 1 point in the same 3 games. Scarlets got 3 points in same 3 games

This season, we got 5 points (+4) and scarlets got 5 points (+2) so if we both match our results connacht finish on 55 points and scarlets on 53 points

Edit. No point for me comparing more than one game as challenge cup is coming up
Last season as you can see from cows table, we got 4 points vs Edinburgh where as scarlets got 0 up in Glasgow

I try to avoid totting up potential points anymore as you say its decided on the field but looking at the fixtures, the next 5 are all against teams in and around us in the table and those are the games that ultimately decide where you finish. Wins over the Top 5 are superb but its the games against the other 6 that will be decisive in deciding our fate.

If we can do the double over Edinburgh its highly likely we will finish above them, the double over Scarlets would give us a serious leg up in terms of finishing ahead of them etc. At the very least its important to break even from these games so if we do lose in Llanelli its important we at least leave with something for our efforts.

Looking down the tracks, it'll be a tough game but Ulster at home at present looks very winnable. We messed up a chance to do the treble over the provinces at home 6 years ago, it'd be nice to put that right this time around.

For comparison, Scarlets fixtures:

Scarlets v Ospreys	Parc y Scarlets
Glasgow Warriors v Scarlets	Scotstoun
Scarlets v Connacht	Parc y Scarlets
Scarlets v Munster	Parc y Scarlets
Ulster v Scarlets	Kingspan Stadium
Scarlets v Leinster	Parc y Scarlets
Scarlets v Edinburgh	Parc y Scarlets
Zebre v Scarlets	Stadio XXV Aprile
Newport Gwent Dragons v Scarlets	Rodney Parade
Scarlets v Cardiff Blues	Parc y Scarlets
Benetton Treviso v Scarlets	Stadio Monigo

They could win their last 5 games :dry:
But up to that they have very tough fixtures, their next game could be very telling :sick:

Decided to look at the fixtures up the then end of the season in the league: (from the official site so blame the branch if anything is wrong!)

Fri, 09-01-2015 19:35	Connacht - Edinburgh	Sportsground
Sun, 15-02-2015 12:45	Scarlets - Connacht	Parc Y Scarlets
Sun, 22-02-2015 16:00	Newport Gwent Dragons - Connacht	Rodney Parade
Sun, 01-03-2015 17:15	Connacht - Benetton Treviso	Sportsground
Fri, 06-03-2015 19:35	Cardiff Blues - Connacht	BT Sport Cardiff Arms Park
TBC	Munster - Connacht	TBC
TBC	Connacht - Ulster	Sportsground
TBC	Connacht - Glasgow Warriors	Sportsground
TBC	Zebre - Connacht	Stadio XXV Aprile
TBC	Connacht - Ospreys	Sportsground

Some very tough games in there. Need to win at home to Edinburgh and Treviso (5 points?!?) as well as away to Zebre, that should be another 13 points, hopefully get LBP away to Blues and Munster. That's 15 extra points to put us on 47 (very conservative estimates, I think we can target Ulster and Glasgow [neither are as good as they were last year] but don't think we should be banking on it). Would be nice to be going into the last game of the season not needing anything as the Spreys seems to love turning us over and could be fighting for a home QF, added to the fact they look the best team in the league this year.

Think it's fair to say 47 won't be enough for 6th, so going to to need to keep the head down and keep going and still need to pull off a couple of results to secure 6th. 53-55 seems the benchmark for 6th so 2 more wins needed on top of the estimates above.
Hope I'm not coming across negative but we need to keep our feet on the ground here, but with that said I still think it's doable.

*Disclaimer: rugby is played on field, not on paper so the above guesses are precisely that, wouldn't have picked us for 4 points yesterday and we could have got 5.

Borders no.2 wrote: Another win next Friday and we pass out last season's total with 9 games to spare. Looking back through the table in years gone by, 44 points in 2003/04 was our record points haul over 22 games. We have it well within us to smash that total this season.

Just spotted a mistake in my table. Had us with 11 points away from home last season, not 15. Doesn't impact anything though