GRUDGE MATCH
Exeter were denied two titles by Saracens’ salary-cap scandal. Now they meet in rugby’s ultimate...
IT COULD easily be branded as the battle between good and evil, but whatever the strapline, Exeter against Saracens tomorrow will be box office.
Here are the best teams in the country, whose players made up one- third of England’s World Cup squad, the homespun Chiefs who have clawed their way up from the Championship to the peak of the top flight versus the cash splashing Saracens.
The two clubs have played each other in three of the last four Premiership finals and are separated by two points at the top of the table. Well, they would be if Saracens had not been proven to have broken the salary cap in the last three seasons, fined £5.36million and docked 35 points.
With that points deduction, the champions are bottom on -13 and they travel to Devon to face the team they beat to two titles in the years they cheated.
So while matches in recent seasons between these two have always had an edge, this clash at Sandy Park has the potential to be the spikiest yet.
Rob Baxter, the Exeter director of rugby (below), is not known to moan and groan, but with the Saracens situation now confirmed he has expressed his annoyance.
‘What has changed?’ Baxter asked. ‘It’s out in the open, so you can report on it now, but surely nobody is going to say there has not been the feeling that this has been going on for a few years. It’s not a surprise to anyone in rugby that it has been happening for three years. It’s not a sudden thing.’
The Exeter and Saracens boardrooms have been at loggerheads, too. Nigel Wray, the Saracens owner who has been implicated in their saga, has come under stinging criticism from Exeter counterpart
Tony Rowe. Rowe wants Sarries relegated, stripped of past titles and has considered taking legal action against his rivals after they denied the Chiefs trophies, glory and big pay-cheques.
Wray has not attended Saracens away games since the verdict, and will not be making an appearance in Rowe’s boardroom tomorrow, although his daughter has bought tickets for Sandy Park if he changes his mind.
Along with Owen Farrell, Maro Itoje and Billy and Mako Vunipola, Richard Wigglesworth was one of Wray’s ‘co-investment five’, whose financial arrangements pushed Saracens over the salary cap edge. The scrum-half believes the siege mentality his club have created around themselves is galvanising Saracens as they battle to stay up.
‘It’ll be an unbelievable thing to get out of considering the situation,’ Wigglesworth said. ‘If you go four or five games without winning, it looks impossible. So we can’t afford to do that.’
Wigglesworth is tired of the mud-slinging though. ‘There were a lot of things thrown at us without a massive amount of knowledge. I love it because it all comes from a place of... I say envy, but it is just lazy.’
Exeter will not be motivated solely by salary-cap injustices, according to Baxter. ‘We should want to win because we want to prove we are one of, if not the best, teams in the Premiership. That is a much more successful, long-lived and positive emotion for us to have.
‘Whatever is going on in the background, if that is a motivator for players, then we have to make sure it doesn’t become the be-all and end-all of what we’re about.’ Tomorrow could be a real marker for Saracens. Since the points deduction they have won all three league games and nearly halved the deficit. But they remain 17 points behind Leicester. Lose to Exeter, and brows furrow again.
‘That is exciting,’ Wigglesworth said. ‘That is what you play the game for, to be under a bit of pressure and play meaningful games. Well, we have got a lot of those now and you have got to get
some personalities that enjoy that side of it. I think we have those.’
Mark McCall, Saracens’ director of rugby, played down the do-or-die feeling around the game: ‘You’d like to win and you’d like to play well, but I don’t think we have to win this weekend.’
It is fitting that the decade of domestic rugby ends with a clash between the two titans. Between them, Saracens and Exeter have only missed two Premiership finals since 2010, and have lifted six titles at Twickenham. In matches since the Chiefs came up nine-and-a-half years ago, the score is 13-8 to Sarries, with one draw.
The clash is always required viewing, but even more so now it is bottom against top, the great rivals with a grudge, one ending the year in the heavens of victory, the other the hell of defeat.