18 1GS Saturday June 11 2022 | the timesSport Gallagher Premiership
W
hen it comes to
Saracens facing
Harlequins, players
are not afraid to use
bold words.
“It’s a proper rivalry, I’d say there’s
close to hatred there,” says Jamie
George, the Saracens hooker,
summing up the bitterness between
the London rivals pitched against
each other in one of today’s Gallagher
Premiership semi-finals.
As Simon Massie-Taylor, the
Premiership Rugby chief executive,
noted this week, this game is a
scriptwriter’s dream. It is not only the
champions against the five-times
winners, who are returning from
the shame of their relegation for
salary cap offences, but the latest
chapter in a modern-day tribal feud.
“We know it’s going to be
ferocious,” says Nick Evans, Quins’
fly half for many of these derby days
and now their attack coach.
“Saracens love
confrontation, led by
Owen Farrell, and that’s
great. We’re expecting
that and will stand our
ground. They love to
be in your face —
that’s great. We’ll be
in theirs.”
Those feelings are
mutual. “There’s been a
lot of words thrown
around. Any Quins-Sarries
game is always pretty tense, quite
full-on, pretty feisty,” George says.
“That’s exactly what we’re looking
forward to.”
Harlequins have never seen eye to
eye with Saracens. For them and
some of their fans, Saracens represent
everything they dislike: new money,
bold, noisy neighbours, doing things
differently with their boozy trips to
Oktoberfest or the Lollapalooza
music festival. They hated it when
Saracens built their first permanent
stadium — Allianz Park, now the
StoneX Stadium — and printed the
word “honesty” in huge letters on the
main stand when many knew they
were breaking the salary cap.
Saracens’ feelings are less intense,
but they are content ruffling feathers.
Quins have been seen as the
establishment, sometimes entitled, a
club who could not help slinging mud
in their direction.
They find some of Quins’ barbs
tiresome. In their early years under
the director of rugby Brendan Venter,
Saracens regarded Northampton
Saints and Leicester Tigers as grander
threats, then Exeter Chiefs during
their trophy-gathering era.
“We’ve always had this London
derby, but in the media Quins have
talked about it more than us,” Alex
Goode, the Saracens full back, says.
“Now it’s a genuine rivalry, two of the
country’s best teams. They’ve got the
trophy and we want that off them.
They were pretty vocal in our lowest
point, and it adds fuel to the fire.Cups regularly under Mark McCall’s
leadership and Quins struggled, going
through the head coaches O’Shea,
John Kingston and Paul Gustard,
where their constant drive to beat
Saracens became an unhealthy
obsession. “It felt at times if they beat
us they would be happy [with their
season], rather than looking at the
long game,” Goode says.
As George recalls: “They would
celebrate hard when they beat us. We
were at the time the best team in the
league. I’d be celebrating too.”
Then Quins did not only look at
the Saracens teamsheet and see a
stacked side, but an illegal one. They
were eventually proved right, with
Saracens fined £5.36 million and
docked 105 Premiership points in
2019-20 for breaching the league’s
salary cap, leading to their demotion
to the RFU Championship.
Quins revelled in it, thought
Saracens finally had their
comeuppance, and several of their
players wasted no time in sticking the
boot in, echoing many others’ deep
frustrations.
The scrum half Danny Care has
consistently said asterisks should be
applied to titles Saracens won in that
time, and others demanded the
removal of their trophies. They still sit
at the StoneX — Quins will walk past
a few on their way in today. Their
jersey still shows three stars above
their crest, for their Heineken
Champions Cup wins too.
Saracens believed they deserved
their medals and were unfairly
targeted by envious rivals. They
remember all the jibes that Quins, in
particular, thrust at them, and would
now delight in bloodying more noses,It’s personal: why Quins v Saracens
is the English game’s bitterest rivalry
proving they were a damn good
rugby team. “It’s not for me as a
leader to tell people how they should
or shouldn’t be feeling,” George says.
“But I know people are remembering
those things and will be as motivated
as ever to put in a performance. We
owe it to ourselves for everything
we’ve been through over the last
couple of years.”
The Gustard years at Quins were
intriguing. He tried to implement the
Saracens style, having learnt his trade
there, of set-piece pressure and
emphasis on the kick-chase, which
Quins failed to grasp. Look at Tabai
Matson’s side now, though, and those
foundations are rock solid.
“They’ve backhandedly said some
nice things about Gussy, and what he
put in,” Goode says. “There’s a lot of
smoke and mirrors. People think they
play this all-court game, but they
kick as much as anyone out of their
own half.”
At the Twickenham Stoop there are
gripes that no one properly respects
their 2021 title, and irritation with the
depiction of their game as relaxed,
fun and loose. “ ‘Loose’ is a bit
disrespectful as we do a lot of hard
work around the way we play,” Evans
says. “What might look loose is
organised chaos, maybe. There’s
method to the madness.”
Ashton, who had a brief stint at
Harlequins before joining Worcester
Warriors, then Leicester, calls them
“the Speculators” when appearing on
the BBC’s Rugby Union Weekly
podcast. It is not serious, but this stuff
genuinely annoys Quins’ coaches.
“The fact we’ve made the top four
shows we’re not going to disappear,”
Evans, a New Zealander, says. “We’re
the only team from last year who
made it back, but we’re not talked
about as one who can win it, which is
great. One of our big ambitions is to be
the most admired club in Europe.
Going back to back would cement that.
“Our drive is to back up last year
and keep proving the doubters wrong,
confirming this belief what we’re
doing is right. We want to entertain,
for people to look at us and get joy,
for them to go, ‘Man, I want to do
that.’ ”
The clubs are more aligned than
they would like to admit, as the
retiring Harlequins hooker, Joe Gray,
who played for both, explains. “The
coaching, how tight they are, it’s an
amazing environment and team,” he
says of Saracens. “It’s very similar to
Quins — with a group that’s
extremely close with lots of top
blokes. I definitely tell Quins guys
Sarries isn’t as bad as they think.”
Today there are England battles
everywhere — from Marler and
Mako Vunipola, to Alex Dombrandt
and Billy Vunipola, Marcus Smith and
Farrell, and Louis Lynagh and Max
Malins –— and many on each side,
including Care and George, are
genuine friends.
“Danny and Jamie are close, but
Danny is probably resentful at times
we’ve had success,” Goode says.
“Their confidence wasn’t as strong if
you dug into them or got on top of
them, but you can see now they won’t
go away. Quins have made this a big
rivalry, want to be ‘the London club’,
and that’s a bigger issue for them.
We’re focused on winning.”
Buckle up, everyone. This is
personal.Jibes that reached peak
during salary-cap saga
have added fuel to a
semi-final grudge clash,
writes Will Kelleher
“If we’re not liked,
we’re not liked. When
we first started doing
well, it was because we
played boring rugby, then we
were London South Africa — despite
not having that many South Africans
— then it was again bad rugby, and
then everything else... it’s never been
something that worries us.”
It has never been difficult to find a
Quin who has no time for Saracens.
Only yesterday Joe Marler talked in
The Times about Saracens’ “shit
stadium with a plastic pitch”.
In the Conor O’Shea era at Quins,
around 2014, there were events for
debenture holders with coaches
where Saracens would be the
dominant topic; whether it was
competing with them on the field
(their 2014 tally of 87 league points
was used on O’Shea’s graphs as a
benchmark) or their perceived
creative accounting off it.
O’Shea often remarked on how
Quins had won the league “the right
way” in 2012 — referencing what he
thought was Saracens’ flagrant
cheating — and separated what they
did on the pitch from what they did off
it. “Our respect for their rugby
department — their coaches and
players — is huge. They’re
outstanding in everything they do... as
a rugby department,” he said in 2014.
The previous play-off match
between the two was that year,
Saracens winning 31-17. It culminated
in heated conversations when Chris
Ashton screamed: “Miss it!” at Evans
when he was converting a late Mike
Brown try.
“I don’t think he’d learnt the rules
having come from league, eventhough he’d been over for about six
years,” Goode says, laughing. “Kyle
Sinckler’s chat was a big instigator. It
sounds arrogant, but we were the
better side, at home, and they came to
put us off our game. They’ve done
that with success a few times.”
Returning for the 2014-15 season,
Brown stirred the pot before their
next match-up that September.
“They’re a London club with all the
cash and they have a fake pitch just to
annoy everyone,” he said.
“They also have that silly song they
sing [Stand up for the Saracens]. Just
winds everyone up, doesn’t it? But
that’s why they do it. Is it our biggest
grudge match? Yeah, probably.” His
comments, meant jokily, backfired as
Quins lost 39-0 at home.
There were points, when Saracens
ticked off Premierships and EuropeanLoose-head prop Joe Marler (Quins) v
Mako Vunipola (Saracens)
Marler is generally on the bench for
England behind Ellis Genge, while
Vunipola has only recently returned to
the England training squadNo 8 Alex Dombrandt (Quins) v Billy
Vunipola (Saracens)
Vunipola is in England exile but has
been in form in the Premiership, while
Dombrandt is the man in possessionFly half Marcus Smith (Quins) v Owen
Farrell (Saracens)
The likelihood is that the pair will start
at No 10 and 12 for England in AustraliaThe big England battles
Tempers frayed
at the Stoop in
October during
a 29-22 victory
for SaracensSaracens v
HarlequinsGallagher Premiership
play-off semi-final
Today, 1.30pm
TV: BT Sport 1TOM SANDBERG/PPAUK/SHUTTERSTOCK