Up for the Cup......

13 days after Sarries came away from a windswept Stoop with a 22-29 win sealed by Jackson Wray in a sometimes feisty encounter, we again meet our old friends from the other end of London, this time in the comparatively more tranquil setting of the Premiership Rugby Cup, as it’s properly known, as we begin a fortnight’s break from the hurly-burly of the Premiership.

I always enjoy the Cup games – in their different brandings and formats over the seasons (this competition was previously the Anglo-Welsh Cup, and further back in time the Powergen Cup) – and particularly so as time’s gone and on and they now provide a good opportunity to watch our young and emerging players competing alongside and against their peers in a less intense atmosphere than many Premiership matches: it’s a personal regret, though, that crowds are sometimes some way below capacity for these fixtures but I’d hope for this game that the free guest ticket offer made to Season Ticket Holders, the rivalry with the opposition, and the presence of Quins fans with not too bad a journey (trees permitting) will boost the attendance a bit.  

Obviously I can’t offer you an in-depth Cup form guide or relevant statistics for either club as this is the first round of fixtures in the competition but both have played “A” or rather, in Sarries’ case, Storm, fixtures this season, and making a fairly educated guess the squad line-ups are likely to be similar:

Starting, out of courtesy, with Quins, they’ve played one “A” fixture so far from what I can see, three weeks ago  when they won 5-24 away to London Irish; the line-up that night was bolstered by senior players Ross Chisholm and Will Edwards, the latter of whom impressed when he replaced the injured Tommy Allan against Sarries in the Premiership, and looking at the highlights of the game they made very effective use of the cross-kick into wide areas.

Another player now familiar to us and who was on the bench that night, and again impressed against Sarries, was the academy player Hugh Tizard who you’ll recall went over for an early try at the Stoop and may well feature on Saturday.

Turning to Sarries, we’ve played three Storm fixtures since the beginning of the season with slightly mixed results:

First, we played our friends and former dual-registration partners Bedford Blues back in September when a Sarries squad coached by Kelly Brown and containing a mixture of youth, Premiership experience and new boys fell to a 47-33 defeat at Goldington Road; next up and six days later, we thumped Ealing Trailfinders 71-21 on a warm Friday night at StoneX, again with a mixed squad and featuring a returning Max Malins.

Most recently, we met London Irish at their training ground on 18^th October and won 10-24.    

Prolific in these games was Ben Harris, the former England Sevens player and Tokyo 2020 Olympian, who impressed everyone in the pre-season friendly with Ulster in Belfast and has, to my mind, something of Liam Williams about him – in the three games above Ben scored five tries, so at this level, as he continues to develop back in the full-fifteen game, he carries a huge threat.

In terms of who we’re likely to see running out in the black and red, it doesn’t take a lot of working out that the Sarries squad will again be a blend of youth and experience, with some recent returnees given some game time along with others currently on the fringes of the first team set-up, so my starting XV would look something like:   

Barrington 

Lewis 

Wainwright

McFarland

Hunter-Hill 

Stonham 

Reffell 

Venter 

de Haas 

Manu Vunipola 

Harris

Taylor

Watson

Jackson 

Obatoyinbo

 The format for the tournament is quite complicated, but very basically Sarries will play four pool and cross-pool matches, and the teams in each pool will then be ranked on the basis of points awarded for each match on the same basis as the Premiership.

After Saturday’s game we will play Irish (away) on 19^th November, there's a bye in December, and then we have Saints (home) and Wasps (away) in March.

The three pool winners and the highest ranked second-placed team will compete in knock-out semi-finals, and then the final!

If you’d like full details of how this all works, go to:

premiershiprugby.com

 If you can make it on Saturday, do – and if you do, enjoy the game!

Jonny