Oi oi!

Here's my ramble for the Saracens match:

I woke up Sunday morning and heard...rain “Bloody rain...bloody rain...bloody rain...” as someone on the Tribe once said. Having said that I still had a pretty good reason to get out of bed. Chiefs vs Saracens was certainly going to be an interesting one

The laugh is, I’d had dinner with a mate at the Taj Mahal the previous night and he thought the game would be called off due to the rain. Needless to say, he is not a rugby fan. The rain did however necessitate getting a lift to Sandy Park according to my grandparents, not that I was complaining.

After an awesome start to the season, the Chiefs had just picked up a couple of LBPs which saw us wind up 9th in the table coming into this game. While Rob and the guys would have been glad to be back at Sandy Park, Saracens were not the ideal opponents. Any club side that can boast both Owen Farrel and Charlie Hodgeson amongst others in their squad is a team to be careful of. Having said that...this is the Premiership, what else should we expect?

So once there my grandfather and I make for the curry tent, both decide we didn’t fancy an actual curry but a Sandy Park pasty certainly sounded tasty. I spent a few mins helping to get his mobile working then eventually we had to move.
By the time we got to our seats in the South West Communications Stand(I’m booking tickets for both of us this season, grandfather needs a seat and West Grandstand sells out bloody quick!) the rain had stopped but Big Chief was a no-show. Having the guys come out to the Prodigy’s “Stand up” takes a bit of getting used to but either way it was time to rumble.
Well the thing about rugby matches in wet weather is that they tend to be tight and scrappy, this one was no different. The clock at the north end was busted but I definitely knew we were holding off Saracens pretty well and not only that, making opportunities for ourselves, our first opportunity blown due to a knock on. We could only hold off the visitors for so long though and eventually Farrell did what he does well and Sarries had the lead. It wasn’t long after that though that Nacho was given an opportunity to equalise by what looked like a long distance. We needn’t have worried. 3-3. Overall though the game was still pretty messy, though Kelly Brown getting binned looked to do us a favour. Farrell and Nacho both slotted another pen each and though each had some annoying misses (including one from Nacho that was “it’s going in...it’s going in...” CLANG!) but our favourite Argie got one more than his opposite number and we came in at half time.

Halftime saw us in the Wigwam to grab a couple of halves and we actually heard some of what the ESPN guys were saying about the match. “Expect more from Sarries at half time” seemed to be the general gist. Fact is though the Chiefs had nothing to complain about at this point.

Coming back for the second half and Big Chief had finally shown up. Sarries had thrown on some fresh legs, went on the attack and it wasn’t long before they got an equalising pen. Not long after that though Chiefs were on the attack and something crazy had clearly happened though no one was sure what. Someone suggested that one of our guys had decked one of theirs(this is why I don’t like being in the SW Comms Stand). Bottom line, Chris Ashton of all people got himself binned.

The Chiefs were more than happy to take advantage of being a man up, went on another attack and someone, Sirelli as it turned out, made it over to give us a five point lead.

Sarries weren’t quite done yet though and Farrell slotted another pen to cut the gap and then Whitehead got himself binned, no great wisdom in that as it gave the England international the chance to turn the game round. Luckilly it wasn’t his best kick of all time.

Sarries had one last charge for the line but Sandy Park proved to be the 16th man. Charlie Hodgeson didn’t have what it took to do anything about the scoreline.

The rain came down to put a minor dampner on things but given that the last time I wrote a Chiefs vs Sarries report I wound up having to write about our guys getting absolutely outclassed, I wasn’t in any mood to complain much. Not a classic but as my grandfather said “we got a try and they didn’t”. Against a team like Saracens that’ll do me nicely!