The unusual methods firing Saracens’ charge
Club insiders explain why a left-field approach focused on the squad’s emotions is paying off
When Saracens’ international contingent returned to the fold last week, the coaching staff sat them down in groups of six and told them to express what the club’s culture meant to them.
There was no mention of hard-hitting defence or quick ball from the breakdown. Top of the list were words such as “family” “relationships” and “enjoyment”.
For this remains a remarkable, unique club who are constantly resetting their targets and reviewing their approach, partemotional, part-technical, with people at the core of their philosophy, and performance ranked well above results.
Nothing is taken for granted, particularly not the fact that Saracens have the longest unbeaten stretch in European Cup history, 15 matches in a row, with Glasgow Warriors the latest to challenge that record in tomorrow’s quarter-final.
There is method in the “Hollywood moment” excursions, as coach Alex Sanderson describes them, to the Munich Beer festival or the high-risk pre-Christmas 2016 trip to St Anton ski resort where Sanderson himself was the only one to get injured, pulling a hamstring as he fell down a hillside.
And why not play basketball in training or build a creche, with the prams and toys squeezed into a corner of the brains-trust coaches’ room, when some 35 children have been born to Saracens players in recent years?
Five days after their philosophical huddles, Saracens inflicted on Bath, a club who once had the same well-stocked trophy cabinet as their opponents, their worst league defeat in 15 years as they won 53-10.
“And the first thing we did this Tuesday was to look at correcting our faults from that game,” said Sanderson. “It was said that we were awesome when in fact there were plenty of errors.
“Detail has its role but of more significance is the emotional side of things. We see the club as an ideal, not as a place. It would be so easy to put the culture, the values, all that sort of stuff to one side when you’re in a week as big as this. But you can’t afford to do so.
“One of our board members, Clem Booth, is also chairman of Allianz Global Corporate. He reckons that a leading brand needs to improve by 10 per cent each year to keep ahead, that’s 0.2 per cent improvement each week. That’s what we confront every day.
“We don’t know exactly which button you need to push to make it happen but what we do know is we work from in-to-out, where the people are the most important element and the result is the least.”
Sanderson, who has been at the club, first as a player, since 2004, readily acknowledges that it all sounds “a bit fluffy”. Certainly that was the view of Chris Ashton when he arrived from Northampton five years ago. The high-scoring, high-flying showman wing with the ‘Ash Splash’ celebration dive, might not have seemed an ideal fit for Saracens’ down-to-earth environment.
Yet, as he prepares to leave for Toulon at the end of the season, Ashton’s form and demeanour speak well of the club’s broadminded outlook. One size does not fit all. “From the outside Saracens seemed happy-clappy and easy to hate,” said Ashton. “I did find it a bit of a circus when I arrived. It took me a few months to get used to it. Apache helicopters landing in the middle of a training session. What’s that all about? But there is no doubt that Saracens have made me a better person as well as a better player.
“These have been my best times, no question. And it’s been tough, with my suspensions and stuff, when it would have been easy for the club to cast me aside. Quite easy. But they had my back every step of the way.”
It is not as if misdemeanours or errant behaviour is tolerated without demur. What is clear, though, is that there is a constant interface between players and