Sarries up for fight after George insult
BACK IN t he fi ght. Saracens slugged their way past Munster as the Vunipola brothers made sure they kept vaunted company in Europe.
But it took a nasty verbal barrage, not from their own coaches but bizarrely a Munster medic who seemingly called Jamie George a ‘fat ****’, to fire them up fully.
With the Irish province 6-3 up 50 minutes in, JJ Hanrahan hitting two penalties to Owen Farrell’s one, the match suddenly spat into tetchy, niggly life.
Saracens had a lineout and George wanted to find the ball to throw in. Munster hid it, as teams often do, and when George found it he kicked it at Niall Scannell’s shins and swore at him.
Then Dr Jamie Kearns, Munster’s medical chief, insulted George so badly that the usually mild-mannered hooker started jabbing his finger at the bobble-hatted doctor.
Soon all hell broke loose and two pugilistic pods formed, one flopping over the sponge separating the running track at Allianz Park from the pitch. Eventually, when it had all calmed down, Munster were awarded a penalty for Farrell charging into the 30-man melee, but Hanrahan missed it.
Sarries’ defence and forwards coach Alex Sanderson told BT Sport: ‘Their doctor said something derogatory to Jamie about his weight, which didn’t go down too well.’ But the suggestion postmatch was that the comment was far more pointed and related to George’s family.
‘It was instigated by a member of their staff who said something horrible to one of our players,’ said Sarries boss Mark McCall. ‘Something pretty bad was said at Jamie. He wouldn’t have reacted the way he reacted otherwise. Whether it was coincidental, I’m not sure, but we certainly played a lot better afterwards. The team we became in the last 20-25 minutes is the team we want to be.’
Saracens will consider reporting Dr Kearns to tournament organisers EPCR.
Johann van Graan, the Munster coach, would not be drawn on the incident, saying: ‘I don’t know what happened there. There were a lot of people involved which wasn’t nice to see. We missed the penalty at 6-3 — if it had have been 9-3 it would have given us momentum.
‘We will look into that. I won’t speculate on it. So many things happen in a game of rugby. You don’t want to see a fight.’
However unsavoury the saga, it riled Saracens up enough to propel them to victory.
Having failed to break Munster’s red wall, finally Billy Vunipola’s sprinkling of stardust had the night shining for Saracens. From the base of a scrum he broke, handed off one defender and drew in three more before flicking an offload out to Sean Maitland for the vital try.
And when Mako Vunipola bundled over late on Sarries knew they had done it, crucially denying Munster a bonus point in the process.
Saracens have a delicate quandary in their self-inflicted state of having to split selections in the aftermath of their fine and points-deduction for breaking the Premiership’s salary cap. But they targeted this game and now know wins against Ospreys and Racing 92 in January could see them in the ring for the knockouts.
GLOUCESTER’S hopes of reaching the knockout stages are hanging by a thread after Robin Copeland’s last-gasp try saw them pi pped 27- 24 by Connacht in Galway. Gloucester led 24-13 after 76 minutes but the loss severely dents their hopes of progressing as one of the best runners-up