From Owen Slot in The Times :
For the last five minutes of this Heineken Champions Cup final, Leinster laboured away in their own 22, hammering at the Saracens defence, pounding away again and again to try to find a way through. They had, by then, been brought well and truly to heel and the question they left behind was: if they could not find a way, then who can?
Saracens have one half of the double and, with due respect to Exeter Chiefs, Gloucester and whoever qualifies fourth, they were favourites to win the Gallagher Premiership before the weekend and, surely, even stronger favourites now.
An exhibition of their ridiculous array of qualities was magnificently staged at St James’ Park, in Newcastle, on Saturday: their ability to come back from behind, their refusal to be rattled by a ten-point deficit, their ability to think for themselves and turn it around and then, in the last half hour, their sheer power and the accuracy with which they applied it, negating so much of their Irish opposition and thus reining in the influence of Johnny Sexton, the world player of the year.
When Leo Cullen, the Leinster head coach, addressed this in his press conference, he described the Saracens forwards and how he found himself looking up at them in the tunnel before the game with a sense of awe.
“They are big, big men,” he said, “very big men. We don’t have access to many players like that.” And he asked openly the question that his Leinster team had failed to answer: “How do you play against this type of team that suffocates you? They try and steamroller you and they are very good at it.”
For Saracens’ rivals, the hope may fester that, at some point, they will hit their peak and start to decline. For now, though, there is absolutely no sign of this.
What Saracens achieved was to push their performance to new heights. Jamie George has had already won two European titles, a grand slam with England and a Lions Test in New Zealand, but he was unswerving in the opinion that, “That’s the best feeling I’ve ever had on a rugby field”.
How so? “That was the hardest we have had to work for a European trophy; that’s why it’s the best feeling.”
And might there be a sense that they are sated, that they have laurels upon which they can rest? This is George again: “The season that we’ve had, the amount of outside negativity that we’ve had — it just goes to show that if we stay tight as a group we can do anything. Yeah, it’s us versus the world and that’s fine by us.”
The squad are agreed that Leinster forced probably their best ever rugby from them. Their performance in the final two years ago, when they beat Clermont Auvergne in Murrayfield, had been considered a benchmark, but, not any more.
“I thought we went to a level in that second half, against a high-class team, that we haven’t been at,” Mark McCall, the Saracens director of rugby, said.
And as for the double, McCall referenced Saracens’ semi-final defeat against Exeter, two years ago, which came the week after their Clermont win. “A big regret that we have, in 2017, is that we had Exeter away in the Premiership semi-final and we lost in the last minute,” McCall said. “It was seven days after the European Cup final and we had partied too much.
“Exeter are a brilliant team so we didn’t quite blow the opportunity but we weren’t as prepared as we needed to be. The fact that we have two weeks for the semi-final gives us no excuse.
“We are capable of continuing our season. We have got a home semi-final and we have worked dammed hard to get a home semi-final over 22 weeks. We have used 50 players to do that. I don’t want us to blow that.”
A big part of all this is the team’s ability to perform on the day. “That’s the best thing about the group,” George said. “Genuinely all the players are so reliable and they love the big occasion.”
Thus it was, on Friday in the team meeting, that Billy Vunipola stood and addressed the players. “He told us he was going to show up,” Maro Itoje said. “And he did that in abundance.” Indeed he did.
According to George, “he’s the best No 8 in the world at the minute”.
That may be a slightly rose-tinted opinion. Vunipola has not quite asserted himself this year as he did in 2016 and 2017. In the Champions Cup semi-final against Munster, though, he was man of the match and closer to his awesome peak. In this final, he raised his game back to its very best.
The try he scored, with four defenders failing to stop him, was a finish that few players on the planet would have managed. There was intelligence, here, as well as brute force. Leinster were a man down after Scott Fardy’s yellow card and had just been smashed in a scrum.
When Jérôme Garcès, the referee, called for a scrum reset, Leinster pulled in Robbie Henshaw from his position at inside centre and, as Vunipola said: “I knew they were a man down, so I just thought I’d have a go.”
Where does this all end? Not for the foreseeable future. The age profile of the team suggests that they are more likely, still, to improve rather than recede.
There are a few essential parts of the machine who are in their thirties — Brad Barritt is 32, Alex Goode is 31 — but no panic, they have the England star Elliot Daly arriving next season.
The internal production line looks as good as ever too because it was not just the one final for Saracens in Newcastle. This evening, at Kingston Park, Saracens Storm, the A-League team, will contest their final against Newcastle Falcons — which suggests that the strength-in-depth is set to get even deeper.
They are already deep enough to allow most protagonists a week off, this Saturday, against Worcester Warriors. The following weekend they will be all guns blazing in a home Premiership semi-final. And on it goes.
Scorers: Leinster: Try Furlong (32min). Conversion Sexton. Penalty goal Sexton (4). Saracens: Tries Maitland (40+2), B Vunipola (67). Conversions Farrell 2. Penalty goals Farrell 2 (39, 59).
Scoring sequence (Leinster first): 3-0, 10-0, 10-3, 10-8, 10-10 (half-time), 10-13, 10-20.
Leinster R Kearney; J Larmour, G Ringrose, R Henshaw, J Lowe; J Sexton, L McGrath; C Healy (rep: J McGrath 62), S Cronin (rep: J Tracy 51), T Furlong (rep: M Bent 70), D Toner (rep: M Deegan 74), J Ryan, S Fardy (sin-bin 58), S O’Brien (rep: R Ruddock 62), J Conan.
Saracens A Goode; L Williams, A Lozowski, B Barritt, S Maitland; O Farrell, B Spencer (rep: R Wigglesworth 56); M Vunipola (rep: R Barrington 30), J George, T Lamositele (rep: V Kock 30), W Skelton (rep: N Isiekwe 62), G Kruis, M Itoje (sin-bin 30), J Wray, B Vunipola (rep: S Burger 75).
Referee J Garcès (France).
English clubs reign supreme
3 Times Saracens have won the tournament — in three of the past four years. It brings them level with Toulon’s haul and only one behind Toulouse and Leinster, who have won it four times each. They are now clear of Leicester Tigers, Munster and Wasps who have two titles apiece.
9 Titles won by English clubs (Saracens 3, Leicester and Wasps 2 each and Northampton and Bath 1), moving one clear of French teams (eight) and two clear of Irish teams (seven). A Scottish or Welsh team has never won it.
Always a Wasp
