Ordinarily a game‑winning performance from Marcus Smith worth 15 points would include a dozen line‑breaks, several offloads and more hot steps than a Motown nightclub. And while the England star dazzled in patches with ball in hand, it was his composed kicking that was the difference as Harlequins beat Saracens 20-14 in a scrappy but enjoyable London derby.
Smith launched raking kicks into space. He hoisted contestable spirals into pale blue skies. He dinked over the top of rushing defenders. His first‑half try came off a hoof into Saracens’ red zone, one that caused chaos in the backfield. Chandler Cunningham-South gathered the loose ball and bulldozed over the gain line. Shortly after, Smith, on the front foot, wriggled past a tackler to score from five metres out.
“He’s a British & Irish Lion,” Smith’s coach, Jason Gilmore, pointed out. “He gives us that game management. It’s something we’ve struggled with in the past two weeks.”
Saracens were pinned in their own patch and struggled to get out. The mood of the match was summed up when another Smith bomb was shelled by Owen Farrell on the Saracens 22. Though the home side could not convert from the scrum, they maintained their territorial hold over their guests.
Despite their dominance, Harlequins were not stretching their lead and it was wiped out when Saracens scored a screamer from their own half. At first receiver off the back of a scrum, Farrell pirouetted and delivered a gorgeous offload for Lucio Cinti who galloped up field. The Argentinian jinked left then right before stitching an offload of his own for the supporting Fergus Burke.
Smith thought he had a second try after selling a dummy pass and bursting through a gap close to the Saracens line. Quins had nicked the ball off a defensive scrum but the ball had squirted out the side rather than through the No 8’s feet. Fin Baxter won a penalty off the very next scrum and Smith nudged over the penalty to take a 10-7 lead.
Neither side managed to find much fluency in attack. At the 30-minute mark a packed Stoop witnessed 30 kicks from hand. Scrums needed restarting. Lineouts misfired. A brief exchange of shoves between Cunningham-South and Farrell brought one of the loudest cheers of the first half.
Smith belted a high kick with his first touch after the break. Tyrone Green chased after it and put enough pressure on Burke for the ball bobble away. Green was first to react, hacking ahead and winning the race to the line. Smith’s extras opened up a 17-7 lead.
“We got what we deserved but maybe we were lucky to get what we got,” said the Saracens director of rugby, Mark McCall, who gave his supporters some joy when he confirmed the return of Maro Itoje for next week. “Marcus kicked beautifully and put us under a lot of pressure. We probably didn’t prepare the team in the way we should have for what came today and that’s the coach’s fault. But we expect the playing group to react to that better than we did. We lost intent in all of the important things.”
Even an off-colour Saracens team carry threat and they were back in the mix after the hour. With the forwards hammering away in the left corner, Harlequins defenders were sucked into the morass. Ben Earl was the one heavy who kept his distance, prowling the right wing. The cross‑field kick from Farrell could not have been better placed and in a flash the gap was reduced to three after a tough conversion from the tram.
Harlequins had the game won when the debutant Boris Wenger burrowed over from close range following a lineout five metres out. But, for the second time in the game, the home crowd booed a chalked‑off try as replays showed the replacement prop had committed a double movement.
More kicking took the game’s total tally beyond 50 with seven minutes remaining. Crucially it was Smith dictating the tempo in the closing stages. Men in white were kicking in desperation. Smith had it on a string, ensuring the clock ticked down with all the action taking place in Saracens’ third. A penalty for Smith on the final hooter was a fitting end.
“It was a different way to win a game,” said Gilmore, who deserves credit for moving away from the club’s ingrained desire to play free‑flowing rugby. It might not have been a vintage show from the league’s entertainers, but it got the job done against their bitter city rivals.
