A SARRIE STATE OF AFFAIRS

AVIVA PREMIERSHIP FINAL

Exeter v Saracens Twickenham 3pm

ABOVE all he remembers the embarrassment, not the snow and biting cold, which led to Saracens’ Monday from hell.

The shock and disbelief that back-to-back champions of Europe had been humiliated on home turf as never before.

Richard Wigglesworth damaged his hip that night as Clermont rampaged to a 46-14 win bringing a sixth straight loss for sorry Sarries.

But even physical pain paled alongside the mental anguish of putting his name to the club’s heaviest defeat and their worst losing run for 15 years.

Five months on from that rearranged Champions Cup tie, Saracens are favourites to dethrone Exeter at Twickenham today and be crowned English champs.

A remarkable show of character has seen the north Londoners shrug off a seven-match losing streak to win 11 of their last 13 league starts.

“It’s times like that you either sink or swim,” said scrum-half Wigglesworth (above), recalling the dark days of December. “Everyone was going, ‘Oh my God, what’s happening to this team?’ It was unbelievably challenging.”

It has taken some character to get Sarries to where they are now, averaging 55 points a game in their past five outings.

“A bad run like that tests you as a group,” Wigglesworth, 34, added. “We pulled together to put it right, took a pledge to be honest with ourselves. There was collective responsibility from the top down.

“We were short with each other and all the rest of it but only through a sense of wanting to get it right. We kept our heads down and worked our way out of it.”