Play-Off chasing Connacht Rugby are ready to embrace the pressure as they head into their make-or-break BKT United Rugby Championship clash with Edinburgh Rugby.

Going into the final weekend of the regular season, the west of Ireland province are one point outside the all-important top eight in ninth place. To make the BKT URC Play-Offs, they need to win at the Hive Stadium on tomorrow night (19:45 UK) and hope that other results go their way.

Scrum-half Ben Murphy acknowledges it won’t be easy to resolve their side of the equation as they travel to in-form Edinburgh. “They have won the last three games on the bounce,” said the 25-year-old. They have looked a lot more dangerous the last few weeks as well. They are throwing the ball around a lot more. So we know there is a serious threat and we are taking it as seriously as it comes.

“There’s pressure on the game, there’s no getting away from that. You either shy away from it or you walk into it head first. That’s what we plan on doing Friday night. There is more of an embrace of pressure now in this group. We know it’s going to be there, we know it’s going to be the same again this week, but we now feel like we have got tools to combat that pressure and get into our flow. I think that’s been a big plus for us this year.”

It’s been some turnaround from Connacht during what has been very much a season of two halves.

They only won three of their first 10 BKT URC matches to leave the Play-Offs looking a distant prospect. But, since then, they have recorded victories in six of their last seven in the league to put themselves right back in the mix.

“We’ve gone through a bit of pain. We didn’t have the start to the season we wanted,” admitted Murphy. But, every week, we felt like we were getting closer. Then we started a bit of a win streak and that’s given us confidence that what we are doing is working.

“The buy-in we have had from the whole squad has been immense, especially the last couple of months where the games are coming thick and fast. Everyone has just gone head first into it and it’s working well for us.”

Murphy’s half-back partner Josh Ioane echoes this point of view. “We had some painful games, some close losses, games we should have won,” said the Auckland-born All Black. “But then came the victory over Glasgow and we also won our first interpro against Ulster. That sort of got into the boys’ heads. Those were two teams at the top of the table that we were competing with. From there, it just became a habit.

“The whole year we have been training really hard and it’s been cool to see the growth in the team. We have found some real confidence coming into the back end of the season. We have been going well.”

Connacht’s latest success was the 26-7 bonus point victory over Munster Rugby at Galway’s Dexcom Stadium in Round 17. “There was a lot of pressure going into that game,” said Ioane.

“But you could sense the confidence in the warm up. You could just feel we were there, while there was real excitement around the supporters.

“We were into the wind in the first half which meant it was going to be a bit tricky to exit. So we came up with a plan that we were going to have to hold on to the ball a little bit. As the game unfolded, the boys were just winning collisions, getting on top. We found ourselves down in their half and getting points. We were happy overall.”

Now comes the crucial clash with Edinburgh. “We have been preparing the best we can,” said former Highlanders and Chiefs fly-half Ioane. “We have got our work done. Now it’s books down and trust what we have done and just go out there and whatever happens happens.”

As a father to two young children, Ryan Elias has a fresh perspective on life, as well as a renewed love for the game of rugby.

The Scarlets and Wales hooker admits he went through some tough times in recent years amid a catalogue of injury issues with his Achilles, neck, hamstring and bicep. Those fitness problems contributed to him spending some 15 months out of the international picture, while he concedes he wasn’t playing his best rugby when he did get out on the field, as everything got on top of him.

But, recently, there has been a welcome change in his fortunes. He returned to the Test arena during this season’s Six Nations and figured in four of the five matches, sharing in the much needed victory over Italy. Now he has been named in the Welsh squad for the summer fixtures and that will give him an opportunity to reach a real career landmark as he is just two caps away from the half century.

Life is good off the field too, as dad to two young daughters, aged two and half and six months old respectively. So Elias is in an upbeat mood as he prepares for the Scarlets’ final BKT URC game of the season, at home to Dragons RFC this Saturday. It’s a real contrast to how things were for him a year or so back.

“There was a low period in my rugby where I definitely didn’t enjoy it,” he says. “It was probably two seasons ago, off the back of the 2023 World Cup in France. Between injuries and missing the first six, seven weeks of my first child getting born, being away at the World Cup, it just seemed like everything got on top of me.

“I wasn’t enjoying my rugby and that was a difficult period for me. I didn’t think I was playing my best rugby either, which doesn’t help. So I kind of just boiled things back. I remember having a conversation with Dwayne Peel (Scarlets coach) around a year and a half ago, just about how I wanted to get back to enjoying my rugby, getting back to basics.

“I sat down and built a plan around how I was going to do that. It helped me build myself back up both on and off the field. It’s nice to be over that bit of a lull. It was a tough period, but I think it’s important to have those periods to appreciate the good times.”

And happily, those good times have returned, as he confirms. “I am feeling good mentally and physically. I have enjoyed the season both for the club and with Wales. It’s been nice being back in the picture, getting over a couple of injuries. I feel like I am enjoying my rugby and when you are doing that everything comes a whole lot easier off the back of it.”

The 31-year-old Elias is also relishing fatherhood. “The perspective piece has been really important for me, growing up and realising there’s a lot bigger things in life than just the game, ” he says.

“It was important for me to realise that. Having the girls and my wife definitely helped me with that, helped me through the whole process.

“When you get home and you have had a tough day in the office or a loss on the weekend, the two little ones don’t realise what’s going on. It’s just a case of rolling the sleeves up and enjoying the time with them and appreciating that time. Time is going very quickly in terms of rugby, but that also means the girls are growing up fast and I want to make the most of being there and be a big presence in their life when they are growing up.”

Looking ahead on the rugby front, there’s the final club fixture of the season against the Dragons this weekend as the Scarlets look to end the campaign on a winning note after narrow one-score defeats to Cardiff Rugby, the Vodacom Bulls and the Ospreys.

“They were games we could have and should have won in our minds,” said Elias. “It’s about taking the positives from those performances and trying to get the result this weekend.”

Then comes a summer international programme which sees Wales playing games against the Barbarians, Fiji, Argentina and South Africa. “I thought it was great for us to get that win against Italy at the end of the Six Nations,” said Elias. “I enjoyed the consistency in the messages and the things we were going after. I thought we showed improvements week on week and got the win in the end.

Hopefully we can build on that, with some big matches coming up. “You saw the improvements through the Six Nations, from the Scotland game to Ireland and then getting the win against Italy.

“We now get to test ourselves again against some of the best sides to see where we are at and if we can make more strides and more improvements. For me, that’s exciting. There’s a good young group of players and the coaches as well.”

Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu has been warmly praised for the way he has added maturity and game management to his “generational” talent.

The Springboks fly-half is now the joint top points scorer in the BKT United Rugby Championship with 147, a tally which has helped the DHL Stormers secure a home quarter-final in the play-offs with a round of matches to spare.

He drew level with the Lions’ Chris Smith with his two-try 21 point haul in last Friday’s 38-38 draw with Ulster Rugby in Belfast where he beat more defenders (11) than any other player in the league over the weekend. As well as leading the way for points scored, he is also in the top six for tries scored (9), clean breaks (19), metres gained (705), defenders beaten (48), try assists (5) and goal kicking (102).

It’s little wonder that DHL Stormers head coach John Dobson is so delighted with the way the 24-year-old is performing. “I think he is a generational player. We are going to enjoy him for a while to come,” he said. “He has grown up very quickly from being the X-Factor, playing off the cuff guy, to taking the responsibility of driving the team.

“When he first came along, it was almost like a party impact, to do something crazy. Now he has got to drive the team forward before his own stuff and he has definitely matured. He is the most vocal guy on the field.

“You think it’s all this natural ability, but his work ethic and his detail is magnificent. He spends a lot of time previewing the opposition, looking at what their triggers are. I absolutely don’t coach him. All I have got to do with him is make sure the rest of the team understands how he is going to play because he is such an individualist.”

Dobson added: “We possibly made a mistake earlier in the year when we put Sacha as the captain because it put a lot of responsibility on him. He was the game driver, the X-Factor, the captain, he has got to worry about the referee and off the field stuff. His diary was full. Not being captain has freed him up.”

Feinberg-Mngomezulu has played a key part in the Stormers winning 12 and drawing one of their 17 BKT URC matches this season to lie just a point behind table-topping Glasgow Warriors.

They have already booked a home quarter-final and are now looking to pave the way for a Cape Town semi-final by finishing in the top two.

Depending on how Glasgow fare away to Ulster, the South African outfit could yet finish first which would give them home advantage all the way through to the Grand Final, should they progress that far. As such, they are determined to secure a victory in Friday night’s final regular season fixture against play-off chasing Cardiff Rugby at the Arms Park.

“We sort of dreamt when we were sailing unbeaten that we could come on this tour not having to win games,” said Dobson. “But we didn’t achieve that. We lost some local derbies and we lost to Connacht. So we are selecting a team with the aim of winning this match. It’s a big game for us because it can give us a path to more home play-offs or certainly the semi-final.

“You see from this competition that home advantage is so important. The last two years we have gone to away quarter-finals and that wasn’t good for us. We lost both of them in Scotstoun.”

Giving his verdict on seventh-placed Cardiff, he said: “They have been a surprise. I kept expecting them to fall away given their squad, but they have been top eight throughout and got some really good results. They have been competitive in every game they have played.

“Cardiff are a problem. We have never won at the Arms Park, so it’s a problematic game for us.

“It’s just a tough place to play. It feels like everything is on top of you and there is no room. The Arms Park is classic.”

As for what he is expecting from their Welsh hosts, Dobson said: “Callum Sheedy is a threat with the way he drives the team. He is clever with those attacking kicks, the little cross kicks and that sort of thing. They have got a massive contestable game in the air and defensively they are really good. It’s a tough team to break down.”

Looking at his team’s season so far, Dobson said: “This is our best squad yet. We are much better than we were in terms of depth. We are pretty content that we have been top or second pretty much the whole year. But if we were to lose a home quarter, then we are going to say it’s a disappointing season. If we don’t get to a semi-final, then we are not going to be content.”

The Stormers are aiming for a second league title having triumphed in their first year in the BKT URC back in 2022. Dobson feels the tournament has moved on significantly since then.

“It’s much more competitive,” he said. “It’s a very hard league to win. It’s definitely harder now than when we won it. It’s a proper league in terms of the investment in squads and coaching. There are no easy games now. The league has definitely got better.”