Sarries backchat costs another game

A constant feature of Sarries games this season is turning out to petulant behaviour, which gives easy penalties, which are costing matches.

Sarries give Tigers win by one point, after a petulant off the ball push that gave the hosts an easy penalty kick at goal.  At home against Irish, two senior Sarries players give an easy penalty for back chat that gives the visitors an unexpected draw.  Backchat, leading to an easy three points for visiting Falcons, did not affect the result. Yesterday, back chat – twice - leading to an easy three points gave Exeter a home win, instead of a draw.  Disciplinary penalties have cost Sarries two wins and a draw so far this season. This is absolutely unacceptable, doubly disgraceful when every single incident has involved the most experienced and senior players at Sarries.  This is not the behaviour of Premiership contenders.  It cannot continue to be the behaviour of players at a club where Humility and Discipline are key words of the identity mantra.  It will not attract support.  It will not earn international recall for players involved. Without this litany, Sarries would be P9, W8 D1.  With it they are P9, W6, D1, L2.

For my own interest, I watched yesterday’s game trying to adopt the mindset of a person who never played the game, is watching it for the first time, perhaps curious about the hype surrounding the broadcasters’ touted bad blood between Exeter and Sarries.  One is in the news for offensive patronisation of the Native American culture, the other for being the club that stole the patronisers’ legitimate titles of recent years. 

To be honest the experience of watching through the eyes of a first-time viewer was thoroughly underwhelming.  Big men run into each other, fall over, get up, run into each other fall over.  Others, not so big, stand at opposite ends of the field and kick the ball to each other.  From time to time, the big men line up and someone throws the ball at them from the edge of the field.  As a diversion, the big men occasionally form two human battering rams and push at each other. Usually, they all fall over, get up and do it all again.  Meanwhile, at every opportunity, lots of people in hi-vis jackets run onto the field, to perform tasks about as comprehensible as those undertaken by people in hi-vis jackets standing on the sites of motorway upgrading works.   A referee blows his whistle a lot, and the TV commentators immediately raise the noise level of their commentary to ensure that TV watchers cannot hear what the referee is saying to the players.  As all this goes on, the commentators are more interested in some profound discussion about caterpillars.  One thinks he knows more about the ‘laws’ of the game that does the global head of referees of the game, one thinks it is a legitimate but unsporting tactic, the third thinks it so arcane that other sides will easily work out how to keep these caterpillars from proliferating.

Rugby is a minority sport in this part of the world and games like yesterday’s will do nothing to change that fact.  It was perhaps a game for purists, those experienced in the arts of scrummaging, breakdowns and falling over.  For the first-time viewer it was plain dreary, and I doubt few first-time watchers would bother to repeat the experience. 

After the game, I read that the RFU has made clear to PRL that abuse of referees, and back chat is abusive, has to be stopped.  What happens at Premiership level is mimicked at lower levels and, because of abuse and worse, the game is losing referees faster than they are entering the role. Without referees there is no rugby.  The sooner players are sanctioned, with a plentiful flourishing of cards, the sooner respect for referees will be a core value of the game again.

After all that, what of the game itself?  I scratch my head.  How could Sarries destroy Exeter in the scrum and line-out, force Exeter into penalty errors on nearly their every visit to the Sarries red zone, and yet lose?  Admittedly, conditions were not conducive to a free-running, handling game, but conditions are the same for both sides.  Did any Exeter player so out-perform his opposite number as to turn the game?  Not to my mind.  As far as I could see, and I cannot bring myself to re-watch the game, the sides were very evenly matched, playing styles so similar that neither had any advantage as a result of surprise, the weather or anything else.  Handling errors were more numerous than usual, perhaps inevitably given the weather.  Referees can influence outcomes, but not today, and injuries can change dynamics, but not today.  I can only assume that for all the thoughts that Exeter were wound-up for the game, to put one over their bete-noire team, Sarries were more affected by the occasion, to the point of losing judgement at key moments.

Sarries have learned a few important things, and still need to learn a few others.  As supporters, we will have been entirely unsurprised by yet another revelation that Maro Itoje is now perhaps the most dangerous defensive player in world rugby.  His tendency to overplay and give away penalties is now controlled, and we see time and again his ability to use defence as a way of creating attack, niggling at opposition confidence, especially when he takes away attackers’ thinking-time.  The Sarries back line, lacking a heavy carrying presence, seems to go for aligning as many playmakers as possible, and yesterday’s trio, Alex Goode at 10, Alex Lozowski at 13 and Max Malins at 15, produced most of the moments of attacking skill that lighted the dreary day.  Having Alex Lewington, Nick Tompkins and Elliot Daly at 11,12,14, does no harm in that department either.  The idea of using the ball to make ground, with players seeking space between defenders, not trying to barge through the opposition, is appealing.  Alez Lozowski is proving to be an important part of the whole.  His kicking is confident and gives stats off the tee that are more than respectable, given his willingness to try from distance.  I presume that with Eliot now back on the team sheet, we may see some reversion to his long-range role, leaving the front-line kicker to hammer home advantage from closer range.  It is good to have seen that good technique by some of the smaller men on the field can be highly effective against the largest.  

I have mentioned Maro, and one other forward deserves a shout.  I thought that Vincent Koch had a very powerful game, in the set-piece and loose, in attack or defence, the pick, with Maro, of the Sarries all-round forwards.  Would that at least three other Sarries forwards could learn the effective use of self-discipline as an aid to being effective team players.

Exeter: Hogg; Nowell, Slade, Whitten, O'Flaherty; J Simmonds, J Maunder; Hepburn, Cowan-Dickie (capt), Iosefa-Scott, Gray, Hill, Ewers, Armand, S Simmonds.

Replacements: Yeandle, Kenny, Nixon, Capstick, Kirsten, S Maunder, H Skinner, Hendrickson.

Saracens: Malins; Lewington, Lozowski, Tompkins, Daly; Goode (co-capt), Davies; M Vunipola, Lewis, Koch, Itoje, Isiekwe, Wray (co-capt), Earl, B Vunipola .

Replacements: Pifeleti, Mawi, Clarey, Swinson, McFarland, Christie, Van Zyl, Morris.

Referee: Luke Pearce.