{"id":23525,"date":"2025-12-17T15:45:50","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T15:45:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/cardiff-aiming-to-be-urcs-surprise-package-with-derby-wins\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T15:45:50","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T15:45:50","slug":"cardiff-aiming-to-be-urcs-surprise-package-with-derby-wins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/cardiff-aiming-to-be-urcs-surprise-package-with-derby-wins\/","title":{"rendered":"Cardiff aiming to be URC’s surprise package with derby wins"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Cardiff are mixing it with the heavy-hitters in the United Rugby Championship (URC), but face a festive period that will shape their season.<\/b><\/p>\n

Scarlets visit the Arms Park on Friday night (19:45 GMT), Dragons are entertained on 26 December (15:00 GMT) then it is Ospreys away in Bridgend on New Year’s Day (17:30 GMT).<\/p>\n

A healthy points haul would put the URC’s surprise package in a very strong position.<\/p>\n

The Blue and Blacks suffered disruption on the eve of the 2025-26 campaign when it was confirmed head coach Matt Sherratt had left to lead Wales’ attack.<\/p>\n

Assistant Corniel Van Zyl has stepped up and, despite not being given the official title of interim head coach, has guided Cardiff to second in the table.<\/p>\n

They also edged out Ulster<\/a> in the European Challenge Cup last weekend to ensure they will go into the January fixtures with hopes of the last 16.<\/p>\n

Cardiff have won all four games at the Arms Park, left Munster with a pair of bonus points and beat Zebre in Parma.<\/p>\n

Their Challenge Cup opener at Stade Francais, when a heavily rotated squad led at half-time, but then were overpowered, is the only pointless game so far.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Cardiff are mixing it with the heavy-hitters in the United Rugby Championship (URC), but face a festive period that will shape their season. Scarlets visit the Arms Park on Friday night (19:45 GMT), Dragons are entertained on 26 December (15:00 GMT) then it is Ospreys away in Bridgend on New Year’s Day (17:30 GMT). A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23527,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23525\/revisions\/23527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}