Invincibles

IT MUST be a warm feeling to be embroiled in the heat of a ferocious and fabulous final with the clock ticking down and to just know you are going to come out on the right side of the scoreline.

As Saturday’s magnificent Champions Cup battle headed into its final quarter, Saracens held an anorexic one-point lead having been pegged back by one of the great European tries.

The final was seemingly on a knife-edge – the emotional energy with Clermont – but this Saracens side have simply forgotten how to lose big games.

Decisions were going against them and an enthralled Murrayfield was turning yellow but there was no hint of a stutter or a wobble from the crunch bunch. There was no hint of self-doubt. They simply engaged auto-pilot.

One try from Alex Goode and one superb conversion from Owen Farrell later, their place in history as back-to-back champions – unbeaten in a new record of 18 successive games in Europe – was secure. And so was AT MURRAYFIELD deliver on the big stage. We went to Franklin’s Gardens in the Premiership and won a semi-final and it was a big moment of change for us.

“We haven’t lost a play-off game since, which is an incredible record. What is pleasing is that in this final we showed everybody – we showed ourselves – how much we evolved.

“When you don’t get what you want on the scoreboard, you’ve got to be patient, you’ve got to see it for what it is and understand, ‘We are on top here and if we keep on doing what we’re doing and everyone keeps on doing their jobs well then we can pull away eventually’. I thought that experience shone through when they scored their towards that,” said Vunipola. “I think we are a good team – we’ve won two European Cups, which is no mean feat – and we have a big game next week.

“If we win that it will give us an opportunity of stepping up the ladder to greatness but we still have a lot of work to do before I feel comfortable saying we’re a great team.” He also