Defeat of Clermont in European Champions Cup owed as much to team ethos as individual flair – Mark McCall’s side pulled together when going got toughChris Ashton stumbled slightly when he was asked why he was leaving Saracens for Toulon at the end of the season. The most direct of runners took a circuitous route as he pondered the answer to a question which was inviting him to explain why he was swapping the dominant club in Europe for the one they had supplanted and which was on its third head coach of the campaign.Ashton, like David Strettle two years ago, is not so much leaving Saracens as England, frustrated at his international isolation and two long bans in the...
How British & Irish Lions could use magic of a team orchestrated by their coach Mark McCall to produce stunning, incisive finishingEveryone talks about winning being a habit. In rugby it is more complicated than that: nothing comes easy and conquering Everest always has to be done the hard way. Not so long ago Saracens were a team – and a club – with recurring altitude sickness; these days, in Europe particularly, they are the high and mighty masters of all they survey.Two successive European crowns certainly elevates them to select status. Only Leicester, Leinster and Toulon have won back-to-back titles and no one has ever stayed unbeaten for 18 games on the trot. If Toulon are the only side...
Dylan Hartley’s greatest opponent is himself, Jamie George and Owen Farrell can both replace him and it was a good weekend for the Irish If Dylan Hartley had not been sent off we would all be talking about Leinster’s excellence. Perhaps we still should be; even when they were down to their third-choice fly-half the Irish side looked revitalised, for which credit must go both to the players and, in particular, their reshuffled coaching panel. The contrast with Northampton’s flat-footed start was particularly glaring, as the home skipper Tom Wood made abundantly clear after his side’s 37-10 home drubbing. Ultimately though, Hartley’s 58th-minute red card for a forearm smash to the back of Sean O’Brien’s head was the kind of...
Maro Itoje has a perfect mentor at Saracens, home truths for Exeter and New Zealand-born Joey Carbery shows he has a bright future at LeinsterYou can read Robert Kitson’s tribute to Anthony Foley, the Munster head coach who died aged 42 before his side’s scheduled match against Racing 92 in Paris on Sunday, here.Sometimes it is less the number of games a sportsman plays than the heart and soul he pours into the jersey he wears. Anthony Foley had the rare stamina and inner passion to satisfy both criteria, which is why the desperately sad news of his death at the age of 42 cast such a depressing shadow over European rugby. Foley was not just any old retired player;...