Culture Clash at Northampton!

Northampton!
By T
February 16 2006

T looks forward to, currently, Saracens’ only visit to Franklin’s Gardens this season. It’s another must-win game for both teams, with each having collected 2 points from last week’s matches in one form or another.

A clash of styles can be the only description of these two teams on their first meeting this season. Saracens missed two first up tackles in deep in the Northampton half only to see the ball go through several pairs of hands and end up touched down in the opposing corner seconds later. The pack rolled up their sleeves and simply mauled Northampton into submission, with Northampton having no answer and no defence to the rolling maul they ended up conceding a penalty on average every 3 minutes.

The fall out between the contrasting styles was at a level unseen, granted the rugby was ugly, really ugly – even ‘grotesque’ as described by Kevin Affleck recently - but which team wouldn’t play to their strengths and their opposition’s weakness? Stopping the likes of Clarke, Spencer, Reihana, Lamont and Rudd getting anywhere near the ball has only got to be sensible hasn’t it?

Since that game most of the teams in the league have learned how to defend against Saracens one dimensional play and with key injuries hitting hard Saracens slump has been spectacular!

Last Sunday saw an abject first half performance turn into a second half which was straight out of the outgoing Diamond era. Cobus Visage showed how much he means to the team and Broken showed what the team means to him with a snarling performance which dragged the team up off the floor and into contention. Both will start along with most of the second half team with the only changes coming from those returning from international duty and injury. Powell’s impressive cameo has earned him a start at inside centre, with TC shrugging off his injury in time to sit on the bench. Steffon Armitage had a very good full debut and is learning all the time, he’s hard to knock off the ball at the breakdown and clearly knows where the line is, he retains the 7 shirt from the returning blonde menace.

As for Northampton? Well annoyingly for Saracens they’ve hit a bit of form and won back to back games in January and followed this up with an impressive draw at the Causeway last week. Grayson and Poutney appear to have finally found the balance between battling up front and supplying their strike runners with ball. Jon Clarke has been on fire this season and is a real handful with ball in hand while we all know what Reihana is capable of on his day. At present we can’t compete with Northampton on free flowing open rugby, the hope must be we recreate the performance at Vicarage Road. Give Spencer time and space - as we have to opposition 10s in the past few weeks - and Saracens will be cut to ribbons, smother him and the game, and it’s there to be won. No doubt Northampton supporters will moan again about our ‘negative’ style but right now it’s about winning games, not winning friends.

Things are extremely tight at the bottom and equally tight in the chase for the potential 5th Heineken Cup spot; a win could see us rise up to 6th place in real contention and more importantly well ahead of Bristol who we entertain in what could also be a relegation decider on 26th ,should we lose on Saturday.