The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
As much a cult as a club
When was the moment that the rest of the Gallagher Premiership finally woke up to the repeating cheating of (or completely lost patience with) their spoiled child, multiple champion Saracens?
I’d like to think it was last spring, when Sarries announced they’d signed the Lions and England’s Elliot Daly... barely a year after they’d signed Lions full-back Liam Williams.
It’s at that point where it surely became obvious to everyone that the English and European champions could not be adhering to the English league’s supposedly stringent salary cap.
They had a Lions back three (adding Scotland’s Sean Maitland), the Lions and England stand-off/centre Owen Farrell, various Vunipolas, Maro Itoje, George Kruis and Jamie George. As many Lions as Kruger National Park, and as many South Africans as well, it seemed.
Saracens would have had us believe these players were signing cut-price loyalty deals based on their adoration of the club and it’s unparalled “culture”. That turned out to be as unlikely as it seemed.
At the weekend, Saracens finally conceded they were still above the salary cap for this season and, without presumably risking legal action from players with guaranteed contracts, unable to get the wage-bill down.
So, offered a choice between summary relegation or opening their books for a full, forensic audit, they took the relegation option.
They’d already accepted a £5 million fine and a 32-point deduction, and the Premiership’s demand that their chairman, benefactor and architect, Nigel Wray, resign, although they dressed that one up as a “retirement”.
We can expect a continuing stream of “clarifying” explanations from the club’s many rank apologists, many of whom populate large swathes of the prominent rugby media south of the border.
I have no idea why Saracens attracts almost slavish devotion from people whose job it is to be questioning and cynical. But it’s all part of what appears at times as much of a cult as a rugby club.
We’ve been constantly appraised of the Saracens way, and former players are almost reverential when they speak of the club’s practices and ethos.
It’s almost as if the people behind the club built a wall of guff, consisting of motivational-speak mumbo-jumbo, occasional wild publicity stunts and other PR frippery, to cover up that there was a simple reason for their success.
They simply spent much more money than anyone else, and they tried to hide the fact they were doing it.
Now the present Saracens team will have to be broken up, their many Lions roaming elsewhere.
It’s been a sorry episode for all concerned.
There’s “cashing in” and then there’s Cardiff at Six Nations time...
Traditionally, I begin Six Nations columns as the championship approaches extolling the glories of watching rugby while visiting some of Europe’s great capital cities – and Cardiff.
It’s an old joke, as reliable as soccer obsessives at this time of year whining like two-year-olds in full tantrum at having to give up a page or a few seconds of their blanket media coverage.
And it’s unfair on Cardiff, which is full of lovely, welcoming people and is great if you enjoy the debauched chaos of the city centre on Six Nations weekends.
I’ll concede it’s exceedingly bad form to even whisper a complaint about covering the Six Nations with someone else paying for it for 25 years. I can’t imagine that many will attend every game paying out of their own wallet, and I’m indebted to liverugbytickets. co.uk, who went to the trouble of totting up how much it would cost, if they decided on a whim.
Scotland fans attending all five games in 2020 could expect to fork out about £1,640 if they started booking last week. A sizeable chunk of that – over £400 – is accounted for by tickets for the two games at Murrayfield (Twickenham tickets are £400 a pop, but we’re not there this year).
Which is the most expensive of the away trips? Rome, you’d think, but it’s actually the cheapest. Flights are pricey, but match tickets are £35, and accommodation in Rome is not that costly.
Dublin has a £200 match ticket, and a hotel room is not that cheap in the city, but it’s still way below Cardiff.
Yes, Cardiff. Match tickets are just £100 or so and travel costs are reasonable.
However, as veteran Six Nations travellers will tell you, Cardiff hotel rooms at Six Nations time are the biggest rip-off in the championship.
The survey suggests booking one night in Cardiff will cost you £281. That seems outrageous, but it’s not far off the average. And it doesn’t really matter when you book, either.
The Courier’s billet for the game in March – a generic motel chain, I should add – is £140 a night. That’s a three-fold increase on the price if I’d booked the same room this weekend. It’s been that price for months.
It’s just as well Cardiff has all those other fascinating embellishments to match London, Paris, Rome and Dublin.
Oh, never mind...
Saracens attract almost slavish devotion from people whose job it is to be questioning and cynical