Pretoria's Bulls can guarantee a South African presence in the Super 12 rugby semifinals if they win the penultimate match of the 66-game regular season today.
The Bulls hold fourth-place after 11 rounds but need to beat domestic rivals the Stormers to hold off challenges from the Otago Highlanders and Auckland Blues for the last semifinal place.
Three teams -- the New South Wales Waratahs, Canterbury Crusaders and Wellington Hurricanes -- have secured semifinal spots. The Waratahs, at home in Sydney to the Blues on Friday, have already earned a home semifinal. The No. 2-placed Crusaders host the Hurricanes in the last round.
The Bulls enter their last regular-season match on five consecutive wins and 29 points, two ahead of the Highlanders, who play the Waikato Chiefs earlier Saturday, and three ahead of the Blues.
A win with or without a bonus point will clinch the Bulls' playoffs place, leaving the Blues, Highlanders and the ACT Brumbies, who have 24 points and a mathematical chance of qualification, out of the race.
The Waratahs top the table with 40 points, the Crusaders have 39, the Hurricanes 34 and the Bulls may finish with 33.
A last-round match against a local opponent would seem to favor the Bulls but Stormers coach Gert Smal said his team would not lie down to make way for a South African finalist.
"We'll be going all out and I will select the strongest team," he said.
The Bulls' selection has been affected by a stomach virus which has swept their camp, affecting at least six players, among them flyhalf Morne Steyn, who was named to start.
Coach Heyneke Meyer named a provisional lineup without reserves, making two changes with lock Bakkies Botha -- one of the sick players -- and hooker Gary Botha returning for Danie Rossouw and Danie Coetzee respectively.
Flanker Pedrie Wannenburg and winger Akona Ndungane remained ill and doubtful, while prop Wessel Roux and Coetzee will be named as reserves if passed fit.
In the meantime, the buildup to the derby match has been typified by tough talk from both teams. Stormers lock Willem Stoltz warned that his team would not submit to the "physical intimidation" he said was a feature of the Bulls' play.
"The Bulls like to bully their opponents but hate it when their opponents retaliate," Stoltz said.
Tough talk has also played a part in the Blues' buildup to Friday's clash with the Waratahs. Auckland faces the difficult task of beating the league leaders and taking a four-try bonus point to keep their playoff hopes alive.
The Waratahs might have relaxed, with their home semifinal already secured, but preseason comments by Blues captain Xavier Rush have inflamed the contest.
Rush is reported to have said, after the Blues lost a preseason match against the Waratahs in February, that when the teams met again in May, "you guys will have peaked, troughed, and [will] then be on the way out."
The Waratahs have used the quote as motivation this week and Rush admitted he may have spoken too soon.
"They always start really well but this year they have carried on with it and kept in consistent form and proved a lot of people wrong," he said.
The Highlanders will attempt to bounce back from consecutive losses to the Waratahs and Crusaders when they meet the Chiefs in Hamilton. Although the match is again between national rivals, the Chiefs are not likely to clear a playoffs path for the Highlanders.
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