Saracens v Bristol Bears Preview

What an entertaining weekend of rugby it was! I say weekend, more like an extended one what with the trial of a Thursday night game at Sale. From Thursday through to Sunday we were lucky enough to watch some absolute crackers. Saints v Exeter, Bristol v Tigers and then our, well, slightly clunky win at Newcastle. 5 points nonetheless, but it wasn’t a game that flowed particularly well. Now the Bears are coming to town, and this match always delivers some brilliance and flair from both sides. I for one am extremely excited, Bristol are (apart from us and possibly Bath) my favourite team to watch entertainment-wise. StoneX and Saracens seem to be real bogeys for Bristol – they haven’t beaten us at Barnet Copthall in recent years, and haven’t won against us outright since 2020 and times of COVID-19. It always seems to go right to the wire in every game against the Bears – in 6 of the last 9 meetings between the 2, the winning side has won by 10 points or fewer. Our games with Bristol are also quite high scoring, with 303 points being scored between the 2 teams in the last 5 meetings alone. An average of more than 60 per game! Crackers, eh?! Either way this weekend could be very fast, furious and full of attacking rugby. This is exactly what we want to see at StoneX.

Set Pieces, Mauls and Lineouts

So much of our game plan revolves around first and second phase excellence, so in order to achieve this, we must tidy up our scrum, mauling and lineout. I think we can all agree that the scrum and mauling issues in the Premiership cup were highly unexpected, but it demonstrated a lack pf physical presence in the pack at times, often exacerbated by replacements coming on and a drop in intensity. The scrum held up well against Newcastle and the maul seemed reasonable too, so it seems we did seem to tidy much of these problems up last Friday. Bristol will be a much sterner test than Newcastle (no disrespect to the Red Bulls) so we will see how our props do on Saturday.

Kicking Battle and Territorial Kicking

This is an area where I expect Saracens to excel. We know how the ball bounces on the 3g pitch better than Bristol could ever know, our pitch is slightly smaller (I believe?!) than the one at Ashton Gate so our kicking will naturally be a little more accurate and our backline features players with very big boots such as Owen and Max Malins, both highly capable at making 50/22’s and high ball kicks for explosive players like Brandon Jackson and Noah Caluori to jump and retake. The aerial battle could prove decisive in determining who can score the most points.

Breakdown and Turnovers

Both Bristol and Sarries have some excellent players in the backrow (and midfield alike) who are more than capable of stealing ball at ruck-time and also completing turnovers in the carry. Players like Viliame Mata and Santi Grondonna coming head to head with Andy O-C and Tom Willis… match up of the titans so to speak. From my own observations, I was highly surprised how inefficient and sometimes even poor we were at the breakdown last season. Notable figures like Ben Earl sometimes went missing in big games. We need to ensure our back row are able to compete at the breakdown and to do this, we need dominant collisions. Another area we used to be so strong on back in the ‘wolfpack’ days and now seems to have fallen slightly off the radar.

Running-Rugby and Open Play

Simple thing is – when we played Bristol this time last year, we gave them so many opportunities to run the ball down the field at us. Exactly what they thrive on and they scored a ton of points from attacks from deep. We cannot beat Bristol at their own game, despite the undoubtable quality we possess in the backline; our forwards simply cannot compete with the fitness of the Bristol pack. Bristol are very much a fearless team who will run from their own try line if they can rather than kick possession away. High risk high reward and if we can maintain an organised defensive structure against their punchy strike-runners like Janse van-Rensburg or Kalaveti Ravouvou and disrupt that crucial midfield axis that allows the ball to get to their wingers and FB, we stand a very good chance of taking the 4 or 5 points.
One other point about running – Louis Rees-Zammit is back in the Premiership (I refuse to call it PREM) and is back to his usual tricks of try scoring. He is lethal in open space so we must close him down at every opportunity. It’s a tricky question – do we adopt a drift defence to combat the threat of the Bears midfield or adopt a blitz style but risk getting exposed out wide should someone misread a pass/player? Definitely one I expect MM and his team are discussing or have been discussing.

Key Player Matchups

Tom Willis vs Bill Mata à talk about a battle of the titans. 2 absolute beasts off the back of the scrum and ball-in-hand. Both of their defensive stats are astonishing, and they both possess impressive speed for 2 110kg+ lads. Whichever of the two breaks the gainline the most and makes the most dominant carries will set his team up very nicely indeed.

Owen Farrell vs Janse van-Rensburg à this is a strange matchup. 2 completely different style 12’s. Van Rensburg, whilst very skilful, acts as more a crash-runner and big ball carrier. Owen Farrell acts as more a distributor and decision-maker instead of the crash ball runner. The one similarity between the two is that they both organise the defence very well, making calls to both the players inside and outside of them.
Another difference I forgot to mention is their lineout abilities. Van-Rensburg seems to act as a very nice backup lineout jumper should he need to (I think London Irish v Leicester a few years ago?) whereas I’ve never seen Fazza attempt to jump in a lineout. That of course might be a moment that will happen in the near future.

Gabe Oghre vs Theo Dan àthe lineout will be crucial to our success at the weekend, so whichever of these 2 gets their darts the most accurate and provides their 9 with the best platform will boost their team’s chances of winning. Both also act as excellent crash runners and are highly skilled ball in hand. Potentially a future battle of the England international hookers?....

Onto the team. I expect we will go as strong as we can for this one. It’s always tricky to predict a Saracens team because we are notorious for keeping player injuries/absences under wraps (rather frustratingly so for us editors, but I can see why they do it) so I’m going to predict a very similar team as last week vs Newcastle:

1.        Rhys Carre
2.        Theo Dan
3.        Marco Riccioni
4.        Nick Isiekwe
5.        Hugh Tizard
6.        Nathan Michelow
7.        Andy Onyeama-Christie
8.        Tom Willis
9.        IvZ
10.   Fergus Burke
11.   Rotimi Segun
12.   Owen Faz
13.   Nick Tompkins
14.   Brandon Jackson
15.   Max Malins
16.   Eoghan Clarke
17.   Eroni Mawi
18.   Tietie Tuimauiga
19.   Olamide Sodeke
20.   Harry Wilson
21.   Charlie Bracken
22.   Louis Johnson
23.   Noah Calouri