It is too early, perhaps, to be drawing any conclusions from it, but a showdown between last season’s Premiership finalists captures the imagination at Sandy Park on Suday afternoon. If only it could have featured the subplot of Owen Farrell against Henry Slade, but the former’s return from a back strain will have to wait another week. Mark McCall, Saracens’ director of rugby, described him as touch and go for the trip to Exeter, but in the interests of caution, not to mention another torturous season that could culminate in a Lions Test series in New Zealand some 10 months hence, he is not being risked.
It is also in the interests of Alex Lozowski, the man who stood in for Farrell at No10 in Saracens’ opening win over Worcester. He scored 20 points, which makes him, for now, the league’s top scorer, and Saracens want to give him space to build on that. They are excited by the 23-year‑old, whom they have signed from Wasps to replace someone with a rather longer history at the top of the points-scoring charts, the retiring Charlie Hodgson.
Last season’s finalists have made the fewest signings for this campaign, Saracens six and Exeter three. The Exeter coach, Rob Baxter, bleeds in the second of these to his starting XV, Greg Holmes, a Wallaby prop until recently, with Ollie Devoto having started last Saturday in the defeat at Wasps. Dave Dennis, the third, another Wallaby, will be on the bench again.
Exeter are describing the defeat in Coventry – a bonus-point loss away to a top-four side – as par. They cite a similar result away to Bath in the opening fixture last year as the springboard to their best season yet, but they were able to bounce back from that setback with a home fixture against the doomed men of London Irish. This time, the champions roll into town. Two defeats from two, whatever the opposition, would test Baxter’s equanimity.
Not that Exeter will be the only West Country team to feel the pressure. Bristol host a Premiership fixture for the first time in more than seven years. They are expecting 13,000 at Ashton Gate for what they hope might prove the start of a new era with the visit of Northampton. Bristol will also be missing a fly-half-cum-centre of a certain celebrity in Gavin Henson, but even the bronzed one’s star might be eclipsed if and when Ma’a Nonu becomes the Premiership’s first million-pound player. It is a secret scarcely less open than Warren Gatland’s appointment last week as Lions coach that Bristol have been courting Nonu to that tune.
They opened their campaign with a two-point defeat to Harlequins at Twickenham, which might be considered a better-than-par showing, all the more so when one of Harlequins’ tries became the latest to outrage the forward-pass police. There is little doubt that Marland Yarde’s pass to Joe Marchant, at the end of a first half Bristol had dominated, left his hands in a forward direction, but then so had the pass that sent Tusi Pisi away for Bristol’s second a little earlier. The officials are tying themselves up in knots over the troublesome issue of the forward pass and the various ways their overlords devise of defining it. The sooner Hawk-Eye is involved the better.
Would that there had been such controversies in Northampton’s opening game against Bath. One try was disallowed when Henry Thomas’s pass to Semesa Rokoduguni was correctly called forward without the need for a television review, but it was a lone passage of semi-coherence in a dismal home defeat for the Saints.
Young Harry Mallinder, another 10-cum-12, has been stood down from the fly-half duties he struggled with in the Franklin’s Gardens wet that day. Stephen Myler resumes in the No10 shirt he has become so familiar with. Mallinder starts on the bench. He will probably be called on to make something happen in the second half. Do not be surprised if he succeeds. They might not all be playing this weekend, but the options for England’s midfield are starting to overflow.
