It has been a difficult few weeks for Chris Ashton but he looked as if he enjoyed a measure of redemption when he went over for the try that broke Northampton. That the Saints are his former club may have added extra spice to the moment. The swallow dive was performed with gusto. Saracens knew they were into the semi-finals of the Champions Cup.
They had waited long enough – until the 68th minute – to break a side devastated by injury, whom they were expected to dispatch with ease. Instead, they made hard work of it, not really hitting their straps till the final quarter, flapping around haplessly for practically all of the first half. They had some curious non-performances during the Six Nations, but very rarely do they play as badly as this when everyone is present and correct.
Northampton led for most of the match, playing above themselves for long periods. They ought to have been further ahead than they were, but when Saracens cranked up their game in the second half, the Saints had no response. A last-minute try by Courtney Lawes was irrelevant. Ashton’s try and another by Chris Wyles with a few minutes to go had put the game to bed, despite Saracens’ horribly disjointed first half.
“Good teams find a way of getting the job done,” said Mark McCall, their director of rugby. “We were nowhere near our best today. The last two weeks were almost too easy for us.”
Perhaps their problem was the widely held expectation that this would be yet another walk in the park. Northampton turned up with a team shorn of a host of key players through injury. They had brought so few fans the short trip down the M1 that Saracens were not obliged to extend their capacity to the 15,000 EPCR require all quarter-final stadiums to provide.
Saracens, meanwhile, boasted an almost full-strength side, creaking with Six Nations stars. George Kruis and Maro Itoje did their usual thing at the lineout, it is true, but in the buildup to the only try of the first half, scored by Ken Pisi, Billy Vunipola was out-paced by his opposite number, Teimana Harrison. Duncan Taylor, another of the players of the Six Nations, he for Scotland, was left flat-footed by Jamie Elliott in the buildup to Northampton’s penalty in that same period and he spilled a pass, just as Saracens looked like waking up a bit.
As it was, Northampton felt robbed to go into the break a mere four points ahead. Harrison, a Kiwi who qualifies for England, put on a masterclass for the Saracens back row. He received sterling support from his flankers, the unheralded Ben Nutley and the rather more renowned Lawes, who was in feisty form in the No6 shirt.
If only Stephen Myler’s had matched such heroics. He pulled one penalty attempt and pushed the other in the first 10 minutes, the latter a particularly unfortunate scuff of an easy shot. Then, with Will Fraser in the sin-bin, it seemed as if Northampton had scored when Elliott went over in the corner but he dropped the ball in the process of putting it down.
The Saints finally had their reward a few minutes later, Myler going blind after a lackadaisical chase from the home team, to work Harrison clear. The No8 timed his pass expertly to put Ken Pisi over in the 16th minute.
By the time Fraser returned, Owen Farrell had pulled the deficit back to one with a huge 50m penalty, following his early opener, but after another break from Elliott, Myler was able to re-establish the Saints’ four-point lead before half-time. It was the least they deserved.
Everyone expected a reaction from Saracens, and there duly was one – sort of. Their energy levels rose but execution remained a problem until the final knockings. An obstructing dummy run by Fraser cost Sarries try for Taylor a minute into the second half, before Farrell and Myler exchanged penalties in the third quarter.
For all their disharmony, though, Saracens’ set piece remained dominant throughout. They annihilated a Northampton scrum on the hour for Farrell to land his fourth, which served as warning that normal service was about to be resumed. Ashton looped round from the blindside as Sarries were pressing deep in the Saints’ 22 after a mini-break by Brad Barritt, and sweet hands from Farrell and Alex Goode sent him through for that telling try.
They had their foot on the throat now. Another big scrum set up Farrell for a fifth penalty, before Taylor hammered JJ Hanrahan as Saints tried to run the ball out of defence. The Irishman flung the ball to no one, and Wyles was on hand to touch down.
That was definitely the game for Saracens, a 16-point margin with two minutes to go, which rendered Lawes’s last-minute score in the corner in vain. It was comfortable in the end, which is its own tribute to a side playing so below par in a quarter-final. Wasps lie in wait next, at the Madejski in a fortnight. Saracens are unlikely to get away with a performance like this against them.
