Unloved Sarries take their lumps at last

WE hear a lot these days about financial doping, about the potential for filthy lucre to tilt the playing field. The poor old Dubs get it thrown at them quite a bit and with a certain amount of justification (that said demographics are at least as big a factor in their success). More often though it’s the realm of professional sports where the term most readily applies. To nouveau riche European super-clubs whose new-found wealth originates in the gulf primarily. Questions of how legitimate certain sponsorship agreements are – do they represent market value or is simply a method by which one arm of a gulf regime (say an airline) bolsters another (the football club wholly owned by it)? – and how they link in to financial fair play. Or don’t as the case may be.

Given the amount of money floating around football it feels somewhat inevitable that these grey areas would be exploited. Professional rugby union would seem in a way a less than ideal candidate for it. The potential rewards for success aren’t anywhere nearly as valuable.

And, yet, because the financial stakes are comparatively lower it’s actually that much more vulnerable to it as the saga around Saracens has shown. For relatively little additional outlay (compared to football) Sarries and their chairman and benefactor Nigel Wray have been able to dominate the European and English game in the last four or five years, flouting the salary cap in the English Premiership using what have been described as “co-investment” arrangements with players. It puts a very serious asterisk alongside all of their achievements including their three European titles as they parleyed their unfair domestic advantage into Europe. Given that Munster lost European semi-finals two years Sarries won it, there won’t be much sympathy for their present woes in this neck of the woods.

Indeed it’s fitting that their fine and points deduction ought to make Munster’s journey to the quarter-finals that bit easier this year.