Sport can be cruel but imagine this. You are the national champions, you sit on top of the Premiership with a handy lead and you’ve just played a half-decent 40 minutes of rugby but the scoreboard shows you are 30 points down going to the interval and a probable tongue-lashing.
The key words are “a half-decent 40 minutes” but go back and look at the tapes of Northampton’s first half against Clermont Auvergne in the Champions Cup quarter-final and that would probably be the analysis. Northampton might have fallen off one or two tackles but the execution of their gameplan was not that far off. This will have caused more than a bit of head-scratching at Saracens in the past week.
Put simply, Northampton’s kicking game unravelled in that first half not because they kicked poorly but because Clermont responded brilliantly. Hence the problem facing Saracens: kicking is such a large part of their game and preparing for Saturday’s semi‑final they will have had to figure out whether they dare gamble kicking away possession to a side who clearly relish running the ball back.
The stats are dry but show that in Europe no side kicks the ball from hand more than Saracens – no bad thing because the All Blacks also use the kick as a foundation. More fascinating is an examination of what happened to two of the better Northampton kicks at the Stade Marcel Michelin a fortnight ago.
The first, from George Pisi, looked a beauty. Clermont’s full-back, Nick Abendanon, was forced to turn and he collected the ball five metres from his own line and five metres from touch facing the wrong way. The kick chase wasn’t bad either but Abendanon is in a rich vein of form at the moment; Luther Burrell was sidestepped and Pisi made to look slightly stupid. An overlap was spotted on the right and a try should have been scored. One was scored from the second example kick, however.
If you had to fault Lee Dickson’s box kick it was because it was executed in centre field, rather than closer to a touchline. However, the chase was good again and a couple of Northampton hands might have claimed the ball. Unfortunately for Northampton they didn’t, Abendanon did. Wesley Fofana spun out of a couple of tackles, Napolioni Nalaga added the continuity and Brock James spotted Clermont’s other Fijian wing, Noa Nakaitaci, free.
Those two moves were bookended by a deft display of kicking from James, the Clermont fly-half who is meant to be a distributor rather than a kicker. There is Saracens’ problem in a nutshell.
You don’t have to be a video analyst to know that at the core of Saracens’ game is Richard Wigglesworth and his left boot. And not without reason, because he’s probably the best box kicker in the Premiership and if paid in yards gained, particularly up the short side, would probably be a rich man. In the Six Nations, in those attritional games such as the Wales one, there was an argument for starting with Wigglesworth but on Saturday Saracens have to gamble.
Last April it succeeded in spades when Clermont left Twickenham a broken side but this isn’t the same Clermont, as Northampton discovered. They are massively focused on Europe and winning the one big title that has so far eluded them. And they are prepared to risk their domestic league status in doing so.
The week before Northampton they conceded 40 points losing to Stade Français and last weekend Oyonnax, hardly one of the stellar outfits in the Top 14, did the once unthinkable, winning at the Marcel Michelin. However, look at the team sheets for those games – both were effectively Clermont’s second XV – and clearly selection was made with Europe in mind.
So, going into the game, Clermont will be rested, whereas Saracens had a tough day at the office on Saturday beating Leicester after giving everything in the Paris quarter-final against Racing Métro. It doesn’t bode well but a bit more video analysis might provide a chink of light.
Saracens have been down to Clermont already this year. They didn’t win and again that man Abendanon was key. Yet Saracens kept the margin down to 12 points and that would have looked a lot better but for Vincent Debaty’s try when the English were down to 14. Also, they probably learned a lot about frustrating French ambitions.
Kicking is clearly not at the forefront of the minds of Clermont’s back three – the two Fijian wings and Abendanon. In their own 22 they do get the ball off the field but it’s usually after a couple of passes to set up the main kicker, the currently injured Camille Lopez, or James. Back in January there were times when the Saracens bombardment, going deeper than is their norm, looked to be getting to the home side.
As I say, it’s a gamble. Kick poorly or to a Clermont back three plus Fofana and a confident James (not always the case in Europe; ask Leinster) playing as they did against Northampton and you could come horribly unstuck. Beat them or even match them at aerial ping pong and who knows?
And then there is the venue. One of the big things about the Marcel Michelin is the crowd. There are that many, about 18,000, but the stands are so steep and so close to the pitch that they sound like 50,000. But the semi-final isn’t in Clermont; it’s at Saint-Etienne, an hour down the road. While the Stade Geoffroy Guichard there holds 36,000, it isn’t the same thing at all.
