By Jonny Browne
June 25 2021

All’s well that ends well, then. After two years of newspaper investigations, accusations, vilification, punishment  (some justified, a lot just plain vindictive), abuse from other clubs’ owners, players and in some cases supporters, we’ve served our sentence, climbed back out of the Championship by dint of promotion earned as it should be - on the pitch - and we can, we hope, now look forward to regaining our pre-eminent position in England and Europe as a reinvigorated club with a slate wiped clean and the brightest of futures ahead.   

I’m not going to chronicle the saga of how we ended up having to fight our way out of the Championship  – you all know how that song goes, and like me you’ll have your own views on the club’s past naivety, operating as we did on the very edge of the Salary Cap rules, and on the severity of the punishments meted out to us, fuelled partly by a desire to make an example of the first club to get caught (as some might see it) but also by resentment of our success at home and in Europe, our huge contribution to the England cause, and to some the charisma, increasing profile and burgeoning support base of a club that is perceived in some quarters as an “upstart park team” with no proper history (as if 145 years isn’t “proper history”).

Let’s go back to the dark days of January when it’s clear, with the benefit of hindsight, that the club was in a pretty bad place….

Due to the ongoing tragedy of the Covid-19 pandemic, you’ll recall that we and ten of the other Championship clubs (London Scottish, sadly, did not feel able to take part) were not only denied the normal home-and-away season starting in September – at which time we were still involved in the Premiership and Champions Cup and there had been concern at one point that we might have to go into September competing in two leagues simultaneously – but then had to wait until January to start our Championship campaign, which consisted of four games in the pre-season Trailfinders Cup, sponsored of course by the owners of the eponymous club in Ealing which everyone believed would be the biggest obstacle to Sarries emulating Newcastle Falcons and bouncing straight back up, followed by hoime and away friendlies with Coventry and a ten-game season playing each of the other clubs once, alternating home and away and for the time being in front of no crowds.

We ended up playing only three games in the tournament, as our away game with Doncaster Knights was called off, and results to say the least were mixed – Ealing Trailfinders beat us pretty convincingly in both our encounters, home and away – a perhaps flattering (to Sarries) 27-26 at theirs, and a more emphatic and realistic 39-26 at ours, albeit with our remaining  internationals all away on England duty (and how we felt the hugely significant absence of our retired rock, Brad Barritt), although of the big hitters a clearly ring-rusty Billy did make an appearance to give him some game time but made little real impact, and Vincent Koch also put his hand up.

In both games Ealing looked strong and well-organised, with the predicted big pack and set-piece processes in good working order, plus a sprinkling of top-level experience in the likes of Sean Malton, late of Exeter, and Guy Thompson who had graced the colours of our old rivals Wasps.

This season was not going to be the procession some had predicted – I tried to console myself that these were pre-season hit-outs, with a depleted squad and no league points riding on the results, but it felt like the club was still suffering a hangover from the off-field battering we’d taken over the previous eighteen months, and perhaps the realisation was dawning that we really were operating at a lower level  – our performances were littered with errors, poor defending – remember Dean Hammond slaloming through our entire defence in the second game with no attempt to stop him? – and in the pre- and post-match interviews at this time, Mark McCall seemed tired and dispirited.  

Some compensation came in the form of a 29-10 home win against Doncaster in the same tournament, after a laboured performance and a sluggish start, winning by dint of superior fitness in the latter stages, and then in the non-competitive double header with Coventry we won twice in six days, 48-33 at home, and 47-12 at theirs.

From the above, and given the strength and know-how of Ealing, our season proper, due to start with an away fixture at Cornish Pirates on 6^th March, was looking fraught with potential banana skins in a ten-game season and my feeling, like others, was that we couldn’t afford any errors. We’d almost certainly have to win all ten games to secure top spot, or as a minimum win nine but must beat Ealing, who we were thankfully due to play at home.

 Everyone had been looking forward to a trip to Penzance to experience one of English rugby’s traditional heartlands, maybe sample some cider, and bathe in the unique atmosphere of Mennaye Field – even Jamie George had talked of his excitement about playing in Cornwall.

The game against Pirates, well-documented elsewhere, felt like a disaster, the worst of our fears – that Ealing weren’t the only decent side in the Championship -  were realised as, aided by an impressive young Cardiff fly-half, Luke Scully, we were outfought, outthought and ended up on the wrong side of a 25-17 scoreline.

So we were left having to win every game for the rest of the season by bonus point scores, and with press headlines talking about shock results. Ealing were setting a hot pace and hammering everyone by 50 and 60 point margins.

Things were to get markedly better and we did indeed reel off a sequence of the scores we needed, eating gradually into Ealing’s points total and difference:

Jersey were dispatched 45-13 at Copthall; an impressive part-time Richmond side held us off for a long period at the Athletic Ground but succumbed 3-32 to a Sarries squad including Jamie George and Sean Maitland; our old friends Bedford were put to the sword in a 54-13 hammering which featured all of our England stars except an injured Owen Farrell;  the boys travelled to Doncaster and came away with a 15-50 win which featured our new captain for the first time this season and who immediately hit the headlines with what the press described as a “horror” tackle, and then at last, on 25^th April it was the Big One: Trailfinders at the recently rebranded StoneX Stadium. 

The game, somewhat to my surprise, went according to plan, with a Sarries side fully loaded with clearly up-for-it internationals up against our new nemesis. Throughout long periods of the game, I thought Ealing looked a little nervy – I don’t know whether the reality of who they were playing against hit home, or maybe things just didn’t go according to plan for them, but in a surprisingly convincing victory Sarries prevailed 48-20.  

As the season had worn on, and as our big names returned and we’d figured out this very different league, the club’s mood had lightened. We saw the real Mark McCall re-emerge as his interviews became more and more relaxed, and one of the most heartening aspects of this period was seeing how all of our stars threw  themselves into the task of getting us back to where we belong, with everyone playing with Test-level intensity and in the case of Jamie George that naughty schoolboy grin constantly in evidence. 

Of the field, we’d bagged a rather lucrative new sponsorship deal with City Index.

The league table was looking healthy, and as we rolled on, winning 0-56 at Nottingham, we were catching Ealing on points and in points difference, and even, due to the built-in intervals in the match schedule, had a game in hand.

Following the Nottingham game, the longed-for return of crowds to Championship games was confirmed following the announcement of the latest easing of lockdown as of 17^th May – and Sarries were quick to move the home fixture to that very Monday evening.

In front of 2,000 fortunate season ticket holders, most of us making an emotional return to our stadium after more than a year away, Sarries put on a ruthless display against Ampthill in a 69-12 win – although the best moment of the game came after 50 minutes when Alex Goode swaggered onto the field, fresh from his sojourn in Japan as a Green Rocket.

After spending most of the season watching our games on live streaming, it almost felt unreal actually being in a stadium watching live rugby in the company of hundreds of others. Something I will never again take for granted.

The following Saturday, again in front of a crowd including a few Sarries fans, Coventry were thrashed 0-73 and were almost there.

We had been due to play Hartpury, but the game was called off due to Covid issues down there, and controversially we were “awarded” a 0-0 draw with no points being awarded – we were thus denied top spot in the league, the cancellation of  the Hartpury game meaning we couldn’t achieve what we needed, which entailed winning by just two points and scoring four tries.

I won’t dwell on the playoff games themselves as they’re still very fresh in the memory, but suffice to say a thumping 0-60 win at Vallis Way followed by an emotional 57-15 victory at StoneX where we sadly said goodbye to Mike Rhodes – albeit earlier in the day than we’d wanted to when he was red-carded – and Tom Whiteley, who ended his Sarries career with an acrobatic try.

The day, and what felt like a long, hard season but was in reality 16 games in all, ended with the familiar but enduringly marvellous sight of a trophy being lifted, a lap of honour with the players’ children proudly parading alongside their dads, and for me there were tears in the Fez Club.   

So what’s next?

What’s happened over the past two years has tested the spirit of the club to the limit, but we’ve come through it with that spirit and our unity unbroken.

We have seen the running of the club pass from a genuinely good man into the very best possible hands of his daughter Lucy and her colleagues, who will take the club forward into a new era of stability.   

Although we’ve said our farewells to several great servants – notably Mike Rhodes - the Sarries squad for 2021-22, with our loanees returning enriched by different experiences elsewhere, and with exciting enhancements in the form of Marco Riccio, Ruben de Haas and Ivan Van Zyl, will I believe take us into a bright future on the pitch and while next season may not quite be what some are expecting as we consolidate our position back in the Premiership, we will get back to where we were, and where we all believe we belong - at the top of the game both in English and European rugby.

In terms of how our return to the top level has been received, the press seems to have been largely positive but there’s no doubt  – and it’s started already on social media, including the supposedly business-orientated Linkedin would you believe, and we’ll probably get some “incoming” on this forum – that there will be people in and around the game who won’t exactly be welcoming us back to the Premiership with open arms, and certainly won’t be too pleased when we once more win trophy after trophy. But do we care what they think?

I’m going to leave you with the recent and memorable words of our leader, Mark McCall – “we had what we thought we had”.