Mark McCall's Saracens admission is unlikely to go down well with EPCR
Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall is prepared to sacrifice their chances of more European glory as he admitted this season’s priority was now avoiding relegation.
The under-fire Gallagher Premiership champions overcame the most troubling of weeks to beat Gloucester 21-12 at Kingsholm.
The visitors, who are appealing against a 35-point deduction and a fine of more than £5million for breaching salary cap rules, ground out a deserved victory thanks to tries from Nick Tompkins and Ben Earl, with Manu Vunipola adding three penalties and a conversion.
Saracens failed to turn up for the 2019-20 season launch of the Heineken Champions Cup and Challenge Cup in Cardiff on Wednesday, the day after the punishments were imposed, but McCall did face the media on Saturday and revealed he was likely to field a youthful-looking team in the defence of their European crown.
“Despite the appeal, we have to plan for the worst-case scenario so to avoid relegation is now the priority ahead of European rugby,” he said.
“We are not planning on breaking up our squad and most of the England players were in on Tuesday as they love the club, but the conversations with them may be a bit different now as some of our younger players deserve a chance in Europe.
“I haven’t read too much in the papers and we can’t control what people are saying, but today I think it’s one of our best wins as I can’t believe how switched on the players were.”
McCall felt his side “took toughness to a whole new level” as he described the Kingsholm crowd as “quite quiet”.
There was still plenty of anger directed towards the visitors from the stands, though, with the Saracens team greeted by a chorus of boos as they took to the field and a group of home fans in The Shed waving fake money.
But Saracens coach Alex Sanderson felt his side were galvanised by the reception.
“We accept the hate we are going to get, but we think it is misplaced and misguided,” he said.
“We used the anger directed at us to fuel our motivation and, whilst it won’t last for too long, we’ll use the negative energy to inspire us as, at present, emotions are running very high.”
Tom Marshall and Lewis Ludlow scored Gloucester’s tries, with Billy Twelvetrees kicking a conversion, but Gloucester head coach Johan Ackermann accepted his side were second best.
“They have a DNA that works for them and they were better than us despite having to play under considerable pressure,” he said.
“We started well but didn’t get the points and after that we lost the scrum and line-out battle and couldn’t get our game going.
“Defensively they were tremendous and tactically they out-kicked us, so we have to take the defeat on the chin as you need to be at your best in this competition and we weren’t.”
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Nah, that just needs some more variation. Chip kicks, grubber stabs, all those. Will Jordan showed a pretty good reason why the rush was bad for his link up with BB.
If you have an overlap on a rush defense, they naturally cover out and out and leave a huge gap near the ruck.
It also helps if both teams play the same rules. ARs set the offside line 1m past where the last mans feet were😅
Go to commentsYeah nar, should work for sure. I was just asking why would you do it that way?
It could be achieved by outsourcing all your IP and players to New Zealand, Japan, and America, with a big Super competition between those countries raking it in with all of Australia's best talent to help them at a club level. When there is enough of a following and players coming through internally, and from other international countries (starting out like Australia/without a pro scene), for these high profile clubs to compete without a heavy australian base, then RA could use all the money they'd saved over the decades to turn things around at home and fund 4 super sides of their own that would be good enough to compete.
That sounds like a great model to reset the game in Aus. Take a couple of decades to invest in youth and community networks before trying to become professional again. I just suggest most aussies would be a bit more optimistic they can make it work without the two decades without any pro club rugby bit.
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