Impressive Saints Send Sarries Packing

By Andy Phillpot (filed: 18/8/03)
August 18 2003

Saracens crashed out of the London Pride Middlesex 7s in the second round on Saturday. Andy Phillpot was there to witness a mixed day for the Men in Black.

Masses of people in and around Twickenham. Beautiful sunshine and beer flowing freely. It must be Middlesex Sevens day. With teams representing all the Zurich Premiership clubs as well as 4 invitational teams from the British Army, Loughborough University, London Welsh and Young England, a feast of sevens rugby was promised and certainly delivered.


Saracens' draw brought us up against Sale Sharks in the first round. Sale had quite a strong side including Jos Baxendell, Chris Mayor and their new arrival from Saracens Matt Cairns. Despite our line-up including four established sevens players in Chesney, Haughton, Roques and O’Mahony we never seemed to be able to get out of first gear.

Sale, on the other hand, clicked together quite quickly and established a two try lead. However, some determined defence from Sorrell and Chesney led to Haughton finding himself with the ball in space on the wing and he capitalised on it; beating the defence and then unselfishly offloading to Sorrell to make sure the try was scored under the posts.

Shortly afterwards, Haughton worked his magic again and Saracens took the lead. The restart was the last play and a knock on from a Sale hand brought an end to the proceedings leaving Saracens 19-17 winners.

The next round brought us up against an in--form Northampton Saints side fresh from reaching the final of the Henley International Sevens the week earlier. This was a one-sided affair with Saints eventually running out 47-5 victors after a first half hat-trick from Mark Tucker.

This game did see the unveiling of Saracens' new summer signing Simon Raiwalui, who performed well and showed himself to be solid in defence and with good handling skills.

Saints went on from this game to beat an impressive Newcastle Falcons side in the final, after Falcons knocked out the tournament favourites - and conquerors of Saints in the Henley final - the British Army side complete with 5 Fijian internationals in the semi-final.

Now that all has been said and done, despite our limited progress in this tournament, I saw Kevin Sorrell being his normal massive presence in defence, Richard Haughton providing his creative spark and electric pace on the wing and as for Kris Chesney, he just seems to get bigger and better every game. All good signs for the start of the real rugby season away to Newcastle Falcons on 14th September.