By Innings
March 28 2022

Before yesterday’s game, LBND made much of the special nature of the game on offer.  Brilliant weather, a stadium fit to grace any sporting event, two teams with great need of a win, fifty thousand spectators, many seeing rugby live for the first time, a dozen or more stars of the domestic game. What could there be not to like?

In the end, what not to like was the game.  For a good game, you need two teams playing at their best, and although one delivered in that respect, the other did not. Bristol Bears, if the constellation of Ursa Major - the Great Bear - is any guide, can probably claim about seven genuinely bright stars.  That is not to disparage the 16 other players in the matchday 23, but reflects the reality of a squad that achieved much last year but fell at the business end of the season.  Saracens can claim a somewhat greater number of genuine stars of first category, and a distinct cluster of what astronomers call secondaries; still stars but not of the greatest brightness.  Yesterday, to take the analogy further, the Bristol stars aligned, and formed some sort of recognisable constellation, whilst the Saracens stars and secondaries rushed around the sky, sometimes forming recognisable patterns, but all too often seeming to meet randomly, surprised to see each other.

Much was made of the fact that MMC had almost a full squad roster from whom to make his selection.  Perhaps the nature of the Showdown nudged him to fill his squad with the biggest names.  However, as I watched the game – on TV because I don’t like Showdown crowds and I have covid anyway – I was struck over and over again by the lack of team cohesion that was a constant factor in Sarries play.  The squad shorn of the international stars has played very coherent rugby for many weeks, but with the side meeting each other for the first time since late January, cohesion was a not a word that sprang to mind as error after error spoiled yet another phase of play. 

I could give others, but Aled Davies, Owen Farrell and Nick Tompkins are all class players, and the latter two, in particular, had solid games, as individuals.  However, as a player in a village side, I often met players for the first time as we changed for the game.  We may all have been fully up to the standard required of village rugby, but if we had never played together before there was always more miss than hit in our team plays. I do not expect to see the standards of cohesion that is customary in a village side when watching the professional game.  Yet even that trio’s lack of instinctive cohesion was not the most glaring example during this game.  Jamie George, England hooker, throws in to the two locks with whom he has been playing for England during the 6 Nations.  Nonetheless, the three of them seem unable to sing from the same page, and one glaring mistimed throw-in led absolutely directly without further touch by any Sarries player, to a Bristol try.  Blame the lifters, blame the Bristol lineout disrupters, but the key role of the Sarries players was to take the ball, and in that they failed.

I never like it when respected commentators like Dallaglio talk about a game, beforehand, as though the result is a forgone conclusion.  He talked about the game being out of sight before Pat Lam could bring on his foremost stars, Sheedy, Radradra and Piutau.  If I had been Pat Lam, I would have played a clip of those brief comments in the Bristol dressing room, because I doubt a better motivator could have been devised.

Writing up the game moment by moment, is not possible for me.  The trouble about watching from home is that it becomes difficult to retain focus when half the game is spent in hiding behind the sofa in case the baddies may get you.  Even my dog wanted no part of it.  As far as I could tell, Bristol set out to play at their best, not beyond their best, which leads to failure.  They know what they can do, did that and stuck to that.  At times that was painful for them, not least in the scrum, where John Afoa, in astronomical terms a fading giant star, had to come on early to shore up a Bears scrum under pressure.  The key fact was that Bears played with an energy that disrupted the Sarries attack, and more worryingly in their attack, all too frequently broke through, or round the ends of, the Sarries defences.  I am only grateful that the three Bristol back who would have really capitalised on Sarries hesitancy in the first half were still on the bench.

Sarries had the rub of the green in the refereeing decisions.  I thought that Billy was very fortunate not to see yellow for an apparently blatant slap-down interception attempt; one hand stretched far beyond any possible knock backwards, let alone actual catch.  LBND, naturally, referred to the injustice of this decision at least seven times during the next ten minutes, but I suppose whingeing is easier than explain the game as it unfolds, which is what I thought he was paid to do.  Similarly, Billy was foolish to roll the ball back into his grasp in a ruck under the posts.  Among the Sarries stars, Billy’s shine is dimmed by his developing persona as a penalty magnet, perhaps he’s simply trying too hard and would do better to go back to what he does best and not try to do what he cannot do at all.  Owen proved yet again that you can take the boy out of rugby league, but you cannot take rugby league out of the boy.  It seems that in every game, at least once, his tackle technique offers an open invitation to receive a yellow card.  It might or might not have been harsh if he got one yesterday, but it is not deniable that similar tackles do receive them in other games. 

Apart from all that, Sarries were still ahead, by a slender three points in 77 minutes.  Sarries regain possession, and the LNBD naturally presumes that Bears have seen the ball for the last time.  All that is needed for the win is a brief series of up-your-jumper pick and go repetitions, a last kick into touch and a scarcely-deserved win.  Too simple, and to prove LBND wrong, the first phase sees a box kick, gratefully taken by Bears, who immediately break out, shoot through the Sarries backs, all aligned for the obvious rather than the blindingly stupid, allowing Bears the easiest stroll-in for a game-winning try that few would have said gave an unjust result.  Fortunately, the TMO immediately calls for a review - a smart Bears move would have been an instant drop-kick conversion attempt after touchdown – and the try is scratched off. 

At the end, a Sarries scrum for the forward pass, and at last the right option, a kick into touch.  The TV cameras focus on two utterly bemused sides: Sarries cannot believe they have won, whilst Bears cannot believe they have lost. 

At least a few Sarries players will look at the review tape with some awareness of how their famed standards were let slip at Alex Lozowski’s favourite ground.  About three - step forward Alex Goode and Maro Itoje, Vincent Koch - will know that if all around them had played as they did, Bristol Bears would have been on the wrong end of a drubbing.

Sitting at home, I wonder whether a game that is decided by incidents that the vast majority of the spectators never saw can ever become more than a minority sport.  Then again, after a game, that I considered mediocre, does rugby have reason to expect to be anything other than a minority sport?  Player welfare - step forward the medical staff of the WRFU - remains secondary to the cash machine, and the laws are utterly incomprehensible to all bar the very few who get to take refereeing courses. 

They say that covid clouds the mind.  I hope so, and that my jaundiced take on recent events at White Hart Lane is the result of such clouding.   Perhaps I should re-watch the recording, and re-read this report.  If I do both, perhaps I shall be moved to write a totally different piece; somehow, I doubt it.

Last words:

MMC: “…not thrilled with the performance.  It was an exciting game, but not the kind of exciting game we want it to be or part of, to be honest.”

Pat Lam: "I am 100% proud of this group.“

Saracens: Goode; Malins, Lozowski, Tompkins, Daly; Farrell (capt), Davies; Barrington, George, Koch, Itoje, Isiekwe, Wray, Earl, B Vunipola 

Replacements: Woolstencroft, Mawi, Wainwright, Swinson, Christie, de Haas, Taylor, Maitland 

Bristol: Lane; Leiua, O'Conor, Frisch, Bates; Eden, Randall; Woolmore, Thacker, Armstrong, Attwood, Joyce (capt), Vui, D Thomas, Harding.

Replacements: Kerr, Y Thomas, Afoa, Jeffries, Green, Sheedy, Radradra, Piutau 

Referee: Christophe Ridley (RFU).