Cardiff pick up 2 bonus points late on against Glasgow. Keeps them in contention. They have to go to Edinburgh and Munster before playing us.

Basically 3 home wins and win at Zebre will see us home but Glasgow may be a chance to give ourselves some breathing room next weekend. We will need to be a lot better than tonight though.

Looking at Ospreys last night I fancy Munster to beat them next week.

Ulster and Connacht put me in joy. I was expecting 4th place european play-off. Home possibly. Now for the 1st time in my opinion, we could target 3rd place Pro14 play-off!!!

Need 15 more points under my calculcation.
3 home win. 3 BPs somewhere (TBP or LBP)
Doable!!! Front up! Rise up!!

Ospreys 0-8 Ulster
Edinburgh 34-17 Dragons
Munster 43-0 Southern Kings

To lose out to them, we'd have to get ahead of Ospreys and Blues while Cheetahs get ahead of all three of us. Not realistic. If Cheetahs do manage to get ahead of us, we'll be sixth, not fourth.

MulMan wrote: Real possibility that we might end up losing out on a play-off spot to them now.

No chance, Cheetahs will finish 5th or more likely 6th. Their recent rally is a quirk of the fixture list - home and away wins over Zebre and Kings since we beat them - and their next four games are all away to us, Scarlets, Leinster and Glasgow.

Cheetahs won 40-36 v Kings over the weekend, they now move within 2 points of us, and are now level with Cardiff. Real possibility that we might end up losing out on a play-off spot to them now.

For what it's worth, we've lost seven games this season, but picked up an LBP in six of these.

I am hoping on balance that during the 6 nations other teams will do us a favour. It’s a great problem to have but loosing a record 6 players to the Irish squad is a real pain right now. At 58 points I was not including bonus points as I always view them literally as a bonus, but you are correct we may need a few.

Ospreys are home to Munster unfortunately. Think we have to be aiming for around 60+ to have a realistic shot at 3rd. Home games and away to Zebre are non negotiable in terms of winning. None of those are bankers but lose any of them and its unlikely we will get there. If we do the business there picking up enough bonus points over the 7 games will determine if we get enough points.

Cardiff's run in looks tough enough. I think we should still finish above them if we don't implode but they've stung us so often in the past I'm wary of them visiting late in the season.

Interestingly one bookie has us at 5/6 to make the top 3, marginally ahead of Ospreys at 10/11 and well up on Blues at 13/5, so that is giving me more confidence than the conference table.
There's also a chance that finishing fourth will get us through to the Champions Cup without a playoff if the four Challenge Cup semi-finalists are all qualified via their leagues (a reasonable prospect with Clermont and La Rochelle flying high and Harlequins and Sale thereabouts) and they apply the same (slightly bizarre) method of allocating the eighth Pro 14 place as they proposed last season: www.pro14rugby.org/2018/05/01/how-pro14-...-if-awarded-by-epcr/

Enda wrote: If we win 5 out of our last 7 we could make third place on around 58 points

You'd hope 5 from 7 will get us through alright as we'd likely finish in or around 61 points (5 wins + 2 tbp + 1 lbp), but even that might not be enough if Ospreys win both games in South Africa.

Based our 50% record (implying 4 wins); or if you go by the excellent comparison thread, whether you go by points accumulated (38 from 14 implies 57 from 21) or the improvement from from last year (plus 12 points from 14 implies plus 18 from 21), you arrive at more like 57 points. That might leave us a tad short.

Looking at the contrasting schedules for expected wins - let's assume contenders win their home games, and win away to the bottom feeders - you'd expect we're still narrow favourites for 3rd, and 4th should be the minimum, given that both Welsh teams have manky fixture lists compared to us.

Ospreys: 4 wins (Ulster, Munster, Dragons at home; one win in South Africa).
Connacht: 5 wins (Cheetahs, Ospreys, Treviso, Cardiff at home; Zebre away).
Cardiff: 3 wins (Glasgow, Kings, Scarlets at home).

I have gone through the remaining matches of the league for Connacht, Ospreys and Cardiff. If we win 5 out of our last 7 we could make third place on around 58 points (removing any possible bonus points for now) First up we need Ospreys to loose at home to Ulster and away to Munster. Also need Cardiff to loose at home to Glasgow and away to Edinburgh. A tough ask but it is certainly possible.

Dramatic finish in PE, was a great try. Kings a bit lucky, the ref didn't check the final pass as it was dodgy.

Unbeleivable, Edinburgh have blown a 8-point margin with 5 min to go in South-Africa!
Now, home euro play-off looks more likely is we're the 4th european club of our conference

They have two games left against the kings and also have to play the dragons

Cheetahs managed an 86th minute win today over Kings to move within 11 points of us with another game against the Kings in hand over us. Just shows how unfair the league is when we have to play Leinster and Ulster and they have two games against the Kings.