Brown tackled

By saracensfan62
October 27 2024

This weekend, the Tigers hunted down and tackled the wolfpack well. They snuffed out our attack and matched us physically, even bettered us at times.

Yesterday’s game was a mixture of incredible individual performances, super team spirit but yet disappointment. Mathew Carley blowing his whistle on 80 minutes after a spirited comeback effort from sarries... it wasn’t quite to be. Both Saracens and Leicester entered this game depleted of their England internationals due to the training camp in Girona. The timing of this camp is definitely questionable - why, despite fewer premiership games, do we still overlap with the international break? Saracens were also hurt by the losses of experienced prop Marco Riccioni and fly half  Alex Goode (cover at 10 due to injuries to Fergus Burke and Louis Johnson)  in the warm up. Best wishes to those 2, hopefully a speedy recovery and we will soon see them back on the field. Tim Swiel stepped into the No.10 role marvellously well it must be said. All credit to him for his performance yesterday, to start upon return to a club after just 1 week of real training is impressive and there’s certainly a lot of potential and a bright future ahead for him at Saracens. Alec Clarey stepped into the tighthead prop place for Riccioni and Ollie Hoskins moved onto the bench. Again a very secure backup option and Clarey has played many a super game for Sarries in his 4 years at the StoneX.

Leicester kicked off at a sold out StoneX and we were underway. The first blood was drawn by Leicester thanks to a Handre Pollard penalty on the 13^th minute and Tigers took the lead. Saracens responded thanks to some fabulous work in the carry from Tom Willis. After a lineout on the Leicester 10m line, sarries pounded the defence a couple of times and Willis found he was able to break through and offloaded to an alert Nick Tompkins who scampered under the posts for Saracens first try. 7-3 sarries thanks to a routine conversion for Tim Swiel. Tigers then responded just a couple of minutes later when a grubber kick through into the Saracens 22 took an awkward deflection off Ivan Van-Zyl’s leg, wrong-footing Tobias Elliott and allowing Ollie Hassell-Collins to collect and score. Pollard added the conversion and Leicester now had a 10-7 lead. The tigers didn’t have to wait long for their next score when some fine work from wallaby centre Izaia Perese allowed him to escape the tackle of Tompkins and bounce Tobias Elliott and score. It must be said that the defence here was very poor and Perese should not have been able to escape 2 defenders in that situation. Notwithstanding Leicester now had a commanding 15-7 lead thanks to the fine work of both their pack who were rapidly gaining thr advantage in the scrum and their backs, with Mike Brown and Anthony Watson again demonstrating that they both still have a lot to offer Leicester in all departments, be it ball carrying skills, aerial skills or in defence. However some magical work from, guess who, Juan Martin Gonzalez selling the Leicester defence an outrageous dummy allowed him to break the line and offload to onrushing Tim Swiel who dashed under the posts and performed a Chris Ashton-eque swan dive (maybe not quite as graceful but entertaining all the same) and converted for a much more healthy 15-14 to Leicester. Tim Swiel knocked over a tricky penalty on 37 minutes to bring Saracens closer but thanks to some enormous Leicester forwards pressure, Alec Clarey was yellow carded for collapsing a rolling maul 5M out from the Saracens try line and Leicester received a penalty try deep into the red at the end of the first half. 22-17 to Leicester at half time, but we had the yellow card to Clarey hanging over the team before the 2^nd half.

Saracens had to start the second half down to 14 men and this was a case of damage limitation. Unfortunately on 46 minutes the floodgates opened allowing the puma veteran Julian Montoya to dot down after another impressive Leicester rolling maul to make the score 29-17. A 57^th minute Pollard penalty seemingly (or at least in my mind) put the game to bed with the score 32-17 and 2 converted tries plus either a penalty or DG required to win. Even though there was still 23 minutes to go, Saracens hadn’t been particularly threatening up to that point. Oh how wrong a man can be.
Saracens won a penalty thanks to Leicester infringement at the breakdown (I think it was at the breakdown, correct me if I’m wrong…) and Swiel kicked for the corner. Willis again broke the tigers defence with a brutal carry and got just short of the line, with Juan Martin Gonzalez on call to dot the ball down and bring the deficit to 10 after Swiel made his only error off the tee all afternoon, failing to add the extras. Saracens had their tails up and once again just 5 minutes later, after a period of significant pressure in the red zone and a warning for the tigers from Mathew Carley, Hadfield was able to burrow over and score after a ball fell out of a ruck, bounced off a knee and fell fortuitously for the Saracens hooker. Swiel added the extras and we were in for a blockbuster finale. Unfortunately, despite some 3 insane Theo McFarland lineout steals, we were (perhaps ironically so) unable to gather our own attacking lineout on the halfway line and turned the ball over. Leicester’s scrummage again dominated and they were able to kick deep into the Saracens 22. Tom Willis managed to turn Leicester over with an outstasnding jackal and Swiel could clear our lines. By this point, we were deep into the 77^th/78^th minute and time was of  upmost importance. Unfortunately, aforementioned Willis knocked on and Tigers had the put in from a scrum. All Tigers had to do was gather the ball from the scrum and kick the ball out, which they did successfully. End score of 29-32 in Leicester's favour and the full fat 5 points for them and 2 for Saracens, which MM later said was a positive outcome due to the depleted team that we unfortunately had to field. Well done to all players and fans who turned out in big numbers to cheer on sarries and although the result wasn’t what we were hoping for, there are still many positives to take from that game.

Now onto the international break. I’m thoroughly excited to see what happens in all the games with many exciting players coming through into the international scene. My concern is that, with such a busy schedule with very challenging and physical games every single weekend during early December, the Christmas period and new year (Bulls home, Stade Francais away, Saints home, Bath away and Bristol home), the international players will be exhausted and a lack of a proper rest week could lead to injuries. Squad rotation I suspect will be key in the upcoming months.  

Well done to Leicester on a deserved win. We can only hope this has been a learning curve for the squad and I’m sure the team will bounce back ready for Newcastle away at the end of November.