Wasps pummel Saracens with eight-try blitz

LONDON: Wasps strode into the English Premiership’s playoff places after a stunning 6423 demolition of league leaders and reigning champions Saracens at Allianz Park on Sunday.

Wasps were 19-0 up inside 10 minutes and ran away with the match to register a fourth successive league victory for the first time in three seasons.

Deputising for Billy Vunipola, who is on England duty at the Six Nations, Wasps’ Fiji-born number eight Nathan Hughes was the star man with a pair of tries.

“Give Wasps an unbelievable amount of credit -- they were phenomenal,” said Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall.

“They gave us a lesson with and without the ball and we didn’t see that coming. I suppose how we respond next is more important than looking back on this game.

“It’s hard to know what to say and to put it into words. For the last seven months things have gone our way and the players have worked really hard and they’ve earned everything we’ve got.

“We’ve played some good rugby and won a lot of matches in that period of time, but obviously today went badly wrong.

“The good news is we’ve got a match in six days’ time against Gloucester and a chance to rectify what went wrong.”

Charles Piutau and Dan Robson also helped themselves to braces of tries for the visitors, while Thomas Young and Jimmy Gopperth also crossed.

Saracens, for whom Brad Barritt and Jim Hamilton went over, deservedly fell to their second defeat of the season. But second-place Exeter’s 23-17 loss at Sale on Saturday kept their four-point advantage intact.

“It’s one of those days when everything seems to go your way and every pass sticks,” said Wasps director of rugby Dai Young.

“If you’d come to see us train on Friday you wouldn’t have seen that performance coming because everything we tried on Friday went wrong, every ball went down.

“Today we did the same moves and every pass stuck so I’m really proud of the players.”