The good news for English rugby is that it will provide four clubs for the quarter-finals of the Champions Cup, more than any other nation; the bad is that they will all have to travel. Saracens confirmed themselves as the fourth, taking the final runners-up spot, but there may yet be more bad news for England, too.
Owen Farrell left the field in the first half with a knee injury that may affect his country’s Six Nations plans. No one was able to shed any light on the extent of the injury but he left the stadium on crutches.
It was a brutal match, played out in Clermont’s magnificent, seething coliseum, but some of the teeth had been taken out of the contest, or at least the ramifications of it, by the result in Montpellier earlier in the day. The defeat of Toulouse meant that Saracens’ directive for qualification was suddenly more forgiving – they now had only to avoid defeat by more than 34 points to be sure of that last place. Both teams were effectively through before a ball had been kicked.
Not that the players necessarily knew that. Mark McCall, Saracens’ director of rugby, confessed that he had told a couple of them the news before they went on, but there was still a home quarter-final to play for, and if the home crowd knew about Toulouse’s defeat it did nothing to dampen their fervour.
To play here in front of such support is some advantage indeed – Clermont have won 88 of their past 90 home games, after all – and there never seemed much doubt, bar a little wobble at the start of the second half, that they would clinch the group with this win.
Northampton will now face a quarter-final in the Massif Central after they succumbed so spectacularly to Racing Métro the day before. And it is to Racing that Saracens will travel for their away day at the start of April.
“We’ll look forward to it,” said McCall. “It’s great that we’re still in it. This has been a really tough group. We’ve done well to get through. But we’re a bit disappointed with today. I thought we were phenomenal without the ball but with the ball we weren’t good enough.”
It was a claustrophobic affair, ruled by the defensive lines, but Clermont had more match-winners. And one of those was an exiled Englishman, Nick Abendanon. The full-back’s bravery and eye for a telling angle proved to be the main difference between the sides and he scored the first of Clermont’s two tries, on the half-hour. The 10-point deficit that score set up obliged Saracens to do something with the ball themselves, and that they failed to do.
No shame in that. Trying to get a result here is famously difficult at the best of times, even without the disruption Saracens suffered. Farrell picked up his injury at the end of the first quarter, appearing to twist a knee when tackled by Julien Bardy. It looked as if he was going to try to run it off but on came Charlie Hodgson, leaving Farrell to walk – without any discernible limp – forlornly down the tunnel. He had missed his one shot at goal by that point and that problem spread to Hodgson, who missed another a couple of minutes after he had come on.
At that point, though, Saracens were making a good fist of things on a pitch that was cutting up badly. They pushed their physicality to the limit, Jacques Burger doing everything in his power to rough up Camille Lopez without quite attracting censure from the referee. It was a balancing act he performed admirably.
Clermont made the first significant move on the scoreboard with that first try, having led from the seventh minute through Lopez’s penalty. On the half-hour Abendanon, looking every inch the regular England full-back he would surely have been in another age, picked a superb line off Morgan Parra to ghost through an apparently organised fringe defence. That was the moment the game’s dynamic changed.
There were a couple more see-saws too, though. Hodgson landed a penalty just before the interval, before Saracens were handed an advantage straight after it. Burger was at the heart of it, his spikiness riling Sébastien Vahaamahina enough to incline him to punch Burger in the face. Yellow card for the huge lock forward.
That was Saracens’ chance to press, which they did, but not with enough incision. Another Hodgson penalty followed towards the end of Vahaamahina’s spell in the sin-bin but on his return it was Saracens’ turn to go down to 14. David Strettle saw yellow when he caught Abendanon in the face with an elbow, which, in the current climate of twitchiness, another referee might have punished even more severely. Clermont were able to take advantage of his absence more effectively, Vincent Debaty burrowing over from the lineout and driving the Clermont set-up when they kicked the penalty for Strettle’s infringement to the corner.
The final quarter became an exercise in tackle practice for Saracens, as Clermont kept the foot on their throat to the delight of their baying fans. Lopez kicked one final penalty to underscore the home team’s dominance, but both sides had known of their fate long before then.
Clermont Abendanon; Nakaitaci (Guildford, 78), Davies, Fofana, Nalaga; Lopez (James, 62), Parra (Radosavljevic, 78); Domingo (Debaty, 51), Kayser (Ulugia, 70), Zirakashvili (Ric, 62), Pierre (Jacquet, 70), Vahaamahina, Chouly (capt), Bardy (Bonnaire, 54), Lee.
Tries Abendanon, Debaty. Con Lopez. Pens Lopez 2.
Saracens Goode; Ashton, Wyles, Barritt (Streather, 79), Strettle; Farrell (Hodgson ,19), Wigglesworth (De Kock, 55); M Vunipola (Barrington, 78), George (Sharman, 78), Du Plessis (Johnston, 55), Hamilton (Itoje, 78), Hargreaves (capt), Brown (Joubert, 59), Burger, B Vunipola. Pens Hodgson 2.
Referee G Clancy (Ire)
