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...
Aviva Premiership campaign, which has seen try-scoring records tumble, reaches play-off stage with Wasps hosting Leicester and Saracens travelling to ExeterA record-breaking 2016-17 Aviva Premiership season is looking set for an equally fast and furious finish as the four title rivals enter the final stretch. Already the two leading sides, Wasps and Exeter, have surged past the longstanding record for team tries scored in a season, previously held by Newcastle in 1997-98, and the play-offs this month are a good bet to produce more high-speed entertainment.Only once before, in 1999-2000 when defences were much less organised, have more tries been scored overall during a 22-match regular season than the tally of 725 this year and more thrills and spills appear...
Premiership officials may wince when they see the team-sheets but with European finals looming and domestic scheduling not ideal, Mick McCall and David Humphreys are making entirely understandable decisionsEven those officials who long ago opted to end the Premiership campaign with a grand sudden-death Twickenham finale will have winced when they saw the team-sheets for the last weekend of the regular season. What should be a climactic Saturday afternoon is in danger of proving little with both Saracens and Gloucester deciding not to pick their strongest XVs in an effort to keep key players fresh for European finals next week. Related: Premiership 2016-17 team of the season: Wasps and Saracens dominate Continue reading...
The argument that foreign talent has stunted home growth falls flat when you think of some of the players who have graced these shores in the past 20 yearsImagine if the last 20 years of English club rugby had passed without a single player from overseas – let alone the rest of Britain and Ireland – featuring in the Premiership. How immeasurably greyer our sporting lives would have been.The thought occurred over the weekend, as Nick Evans bear-hugged his Harlequins director of rugby, John Kingston, and Kelly Brown treated Saracens’ fans to his best post-match Bon Jovi impression, that the finest imports are not measured purely by on-field deeds. Better, perhaps, to gauge their contribution by the size of the...
The Premiership champions are carrying on the tradition of Leicester and Wasps in their days of European domination, with a strong team spirit and mental fortitudeThe last team to beat Saracens in the European Champions Cup, Clermont Auvergne, will meet them in the final next month. After the French club’s victory over Leinster in the semi‑final in Lyon on Sunday a local journalist became rather more lyrical than the Premiership and European champions are known to be. “Saracens, their surgical rugby, shadows and blood, charcoal and demons, await at the corner of Murrayfield where many ghosts prowl,” he wrote. “But is it not the best place for an exorcism?”The final certainly promises to be exercising for Clermont, whose England wing...