Harlequins v Saracens Report

Not an easy one to have to write up. After a positive feast of rugby over the weekend (Northampton v Leicester, Bath v Gloucester and Bristol v Exeter), this match was the pick of the lot. A fiery encounter which has produced some corkers over the last few years. Harlequins were able to field pretty much a full strength starting team with Marcus Smith returning to the squad for the first time this season, admittedly having to field a much weaker bench than they would like to with numerous injuries and Sarries could do much the same with Ben Earl, Lucio Cinti and JMG returning to the matchday 23. The Stoop was stomping and chomping at the bit for a derby match – SW London v N London. Prior to the match kicking off, you could already sense the excitement and tension in the air. This one has become quite a big game for Harlequins over the years, maybe due to that 2024 Showdown when they had their pants pulled down by a ruthless Saracens attack and got thrashed by 50+. No doubt that Quins fans would take every delight in any Saracens error or mistake, and vice-versa. What an entertaining match this one would be.

Kick Off and 1^st Half

And so we kicked off, Saracens seemingly playing into the glaring sun (more on this later…) and the game couldn’t really have got off to a worse start. Nick Tompkins having to come off 7 minutes in with a HIA. Inexplicably the coaching team went for a 6/2 split (why oh why do we keep shooting ourselves in the foot) so this meant Brandon Jackson had to come on and Cinti switch into the 13 role, but we didn’t have any specialist centre cover on the bench. Every single time we adopt the 6/2 split, a back always gets injured early on and we end up having to shuffle everyone around. Murphy’s Law, I believe that is called.
Quins took immediate advantage of our misfortunes and scored thanks to a neat little move from Marcus Smith, dancing his way past Burke and had the momentum to get over the line despite a good tackle from Riccioni. Conversion was nailed and it was already 7-0 with only 10 minutes played. What followed was a game of kick-tennis and territory game that ended with a almost-schoolboy dropped ball from, no other than Owen Farrell. Whether it was nerves or the sunlight that got the better of him, I don’t know. This gifted Quins a handy tactical position from the scrum and they could launch an attack on the sarries line. Luckily our much improved maul defence managed to salvage the situation and we could clear our lines. Huge sigh of relief. Saracens did get some pressure in the Harlequins 22 thanks to great breakdown work from Tom Willis (is there anything that man cannot do?!) but after a poor decision to kick to the corner instead of taking the 3, we came away with sweet nothing.

Saracens have always been a team who could pull off some absolute first phase brilliance. We are known for it. Be it off the scrum or lineout, we do produce some stunning tries or moves straight from the set piece, and today was no exception. Top players always bounce back following a mistake or mishap, and that is exactly what Owen Farrell did. On 26 minutes following a scrum, Faz produced an excellent swivel, the deception lines from Burke and Jackson were lovely and this left Cinti to run a hard line and cut straight through the Quins midfield like a hot knife through butter. The switch pass from him to Burke was perfection and he could outpace Tyrone Green and run under the posts. 7-7 and game on. Straight from the restart there were some heated exchanges, with Willis thundering into Cunningham-South (battle of the titans) and the former knocking-on, gifting Quins a scrum on our 22 line. Following some handbags and a small scuffle, the decision was overturned and Saracens were awarded a penalty. Seems Quins had started the scuffle, so we couldn’t complain! A few minutes after, Quins thought they had a 2^nd try from a Saracens scrum that had gone wrong, as Marcus Smith dotted down under the posts. However the ball had squirted out the tunnel after Van-Zyl had fed it in, so the scrum should’ve actually been reset. Very poor call from the touch judge, can’t really blame the referee as he was on the other side but the touch judge really should’ve done better. From the reset scrum, we collapsed it and Quins had a simple penalty. 3 points and a 10-7 lead at half time for Harlequins courtesy of Marcus Smith. We could perhaps thank our lucky stars we weren’t further behind, the scoreline was not an accurate reflection of the game so far.

2^nd Half

Once again things could not have gone any worse from the kick off. Just 35 seconds in, there was perhaps miscommunication in the Saracens backfield and Fergus Burke couldn’t regather a high ball. It fell neatly at the feet of Tyrone Green who hacked through and could regather and score under the posts. 17-7 and the game now in danger of slipping away from Sarries. Harlequins were pulling out a very Saracens-esque performance (ie Wolfpack defence circa 2013/2014) and were shutting us down at every single opportunity. Front row substitutions came on for both teams, which didn’t really improve the situation at scrumtime for us. Increduously from our perspective, it took until the 62^nd minute to bring on the likes of Olamide Sodeke, Harry Wilson and Juan-Martin Gonzalez who would’ve been exactly what we needed so much earlier in the game. It took until the 64^th minute or so to finally breach the Quins defence. A nice out-the-back move from Farrell allowed Max Malins to find a whole and he exploited it well, offloading to Brandon Jackson. Following a couple of phases, Owen Farrell produced a pinpoint kick to find an unmarked Ben Earl on the wing who could dot down untouched. 17-14 and we were right back in the game.

Regrettably despite consistent pressure we couldn’t find a way through to either get 3 or 5 points and following another awful attempt at a regather, we were penalised just outside the 22 for an offside offense. Marcus Smith notched the 3 pointer on 81 minutes and the game was done. 20-14 to Harlequins the final score and we were lucky to even take 1 point from this one.

Breakdown and Review

Aerial Battle – simply dominated by Harlequins. Max Malins had a terrible game with respect to the high ball, to be frank he couldn’t catch a cold let alone a ball in that match. Isgro and Murley were everywhere and the Quins tactic of high balls and challenging our back 3 worked a treat for them. We will have to fix this ASAP ahead of next weekend’s game against Sale who have the best aerial back 3 in the Premiership by quite a long way. Brandon Jackson looked good when he came on, but we missed players like Tobias Elliott and Roti Segun who are more explosive and can break tackles for fun.

Scrum – I think we were very unlucky with this area. The referee seemed to take an instant dislike to our front row and penalised wherever he could. I will say this only goes up to a certain point, we should’ve been a lot smarter in our scrummaging. This seems to have been an issue for the season now, the quality of our front row is simply not good enough.

Lineout – not much to say on this, we miss Maro. Simple as. Lineout will fix itself once Maro is back.

Half-Backs – needless to say, Fergus Burke had a day to forget, as did IvZ. Bringing on Charlie Bracken on 79 minutes was an insulting as it was stupid. I think Burke should be starting at 10 with Charlie Bracken inside him and Farrell an option off the bench as he can cover 10, 12 or even 13 if needs be. If the centres can stay fit for longer than a couple of weeks at a time, that would be really helpful which leads nicely onto my final point…

Injuries and Match Fitness – a topic which I think has been playing on many of our minds of late. What on earth is going on with our injury list at the minute? Half the squad seem to be carrying niggles/injuries or are unavailable. Currently for centre options we have:

-            Olly Hartley – injured.

-            Sam Spink – injured (all the time, it seems.)

-            Alex Lozowski – injured.

-            Nick Tompkins – mandatory standdown due to positive HIA sustained v Quins.

-            Cameron Hutchinson – short-term injury cover, don’t even know if he’s fit or not.

-            Elliot Daly – injured.

-            Lucio Cinti – fit.

-            Owen Farrell - fit

That list speaks for itself. I admit the last 3 are utility backs but for such a key position we have very limited depth now.

I admit this report has been more of a rant, but it’s getting infuriating to see us making the same mistakes week in week out and not learning. I only hope we can up the ante fast ahead of the Sale game and Maro’s return to training and matches will help.