Northampton win back pride before Strettle secures victory for Saracens
After four mismatches last season, one of English rugby’s most compelling rivalries returned in all its glorious ferocity yewsterday.
Saracens prevailed to maintain their perfect start to the Premiership, but it took two tries in two minutes by former England wing David Strettle to take the contest beyond a Northampton Saints’ side who, if nothing else, have rediscovered their backbone under new director of rugby Chris Boyd.
The humiliation of four defeats by Saracens by more than 50 points last season went a long way to force Northampton to dismiss former director of rugby Jim Mallinder, with forwards coach Dorian West also leaving.
Yesterday, Northampton were a very different beast. They may remain a work in progress for former Hurricanes coach Boyd but he will have taken great heart from his side’s resilience, led superbly by England captain Dylan Hartley on his first start for the club since January.
Hartley scored his second try in as many weeks as Northampton’s mauling game exploited a weakness in Saracens, forcing them to concede a hatful of penalties and seeing Jamie George and Billy Vunipola sent to the sin-bin.
Saracens still departed with a fivepoint haul to remain level with Exeter at the top of the table.
Even without Owen Farrell, who is expected to be fit to face Gloucester next Sunday after missing this game with a minor abdominal strain, their attack was superbly marshalled by Alex Goode, while Will Skelton and Maro Itoje delivered powerful carrying and Vunipola continued to ease himself back after his injury problems.
But this time their exhilaration came in their own response to a perilous position after Northampton had threatened to snatch the match when Dan Biggar landed his second penalty after Richard Wigglesworth had reacted in anger to a tackle by Jamie Gibson as the Saracens scrum-half attempted to make a clearance kick.
“We are absolutely thrilled to win and to get five points,” said Mark McCall, Saracens’ director of rugby. “It was a game we won probably three or four times. Our defensive maul was really poor today, we gave away a cou- ple of penalties on the halfway line, one in the first half and one in the second half, which resulted in them putting us under a lot of pressure with their maul.
“We gave away penalty after penalty and two yellow cards and 14 points. Other than that I thought it was very dominant.
“What is most pleasing is having got into a position where they were two points up with 10 minutes to go – and I think a lot of teams panic in those situations – we were very composed, showed a lot of our experience and won the game well.”
Saracens had appeared to be on course for a comfortable victory after recovering from an early try by Piers Francis following George’s yellow card and a penalty by Biggar.
Two tries by Alex Lewington – an excellent signing from London Irish – and a further try and penalty by Ben Spencer had put Saracens 20-10 in front midway through the second half before Northampton’s mauling again forced the visitors on to the back foot.
The rash of line-out penalties led to Vunipola being shown a yellow card with Hartley and Ben Franks crossing for tries during his absence. Although Goode landed two penalties, the game took another twist when Wigglesworth appeared to swing his leg at Jamie Gibson and Biggar landed the penalty.
Yet Saracens reacted as Saracens tend to do, with 35-year-old Strettle scoring after running a trademark line to score his first try since his return from Clermont Auvergne. His second ensured Northampton were denied a losing bonus point.
“It’s frustrating because there was a lot of effort for no reward,” said Boyd. “With 10 minutes to go we were in the hunt.
“We have never talked about righting the wrong of last year, but just about what we want to do with this team. Saracens are very good, but we were optimistic that if we could put our game plan in place then we could give them a really good run, we just didn’t do it for long enough.”