IN THEIR OWN EYES ...

Saracens versus Wasps … the fallout & Stad praise the Sharks:

Horizon Sports were at both post game press conferences, luckily the two coaches were not in the same room! Here at HS we suspect we have not heard the last of this game!

Firstly looking rather resigned McTague, the Saracens coach, talked to Mike Tindale as the Sarries were leaving Vicarage Road:

“Hi Mike, well that started well and ended in a little confusion.

The weather played such a part that I don’t think the ref had much to do but try and keep warm!! Of course I am disappointed, to go from 14 zip to 14 square is a bit depressing but no you have to look at the stats to see that no points were scored against the wind in that match. I also have spoken to our Scrummie and he claims he didn’t hear the end of normal time. When he realised he quickly released the pass to the fullback, expecting him to bury it into touch. Unfortunately the full back was expecting the scrummie to do so … and well the pass was a surprise and the rest is history.

The opening phases saw the boys getting a nice clean couple of tries, the opposition just didn’t like to get in there and make it personal, basically they were afraid of getting physical. They whinged about the physicality of the Sevens against Sale if I remember rightly, maybe the coach isn’t cut out for the big boys league. Also I think the second half showed that they also lack a little control with their number 8 getting 'sin binned'. I know my boys aren’t angels but we do try and play fair. If we dominated the first half then they certainly dominated the second, both times with the wind was at the teams’ backs, a draw is a fair result for what happened out there today, a win would have been nicer for the home supporters but I guess the guys wanted to show there stuff off and get a bigger margin of victory, we were held by the weather not by Wasps . I was happy, well they our attacks were unstoppable and the defence strong and well placed, both the opposition tries were from breakthrough passes by the fly half helped no doubt by the wind.

My man of the match has to be Rod Penney, not only was he in front line making us huge ground on offense, but was also seen flying back to drop their wingers on the breakaway plays..... Our training focus for the guys this week will be on clearing the ball quicker from the pack, and I will be sending the scrummy to get his ears syringed!! Thanks to all the supporters that showed up for the match in such awful conditions and I hope we have the same atmosphere for when we entertain Stad Francais next week!’

Not exactly kind words but not the fighting words that came out of the Wasps press conference a few hours later. Obviously still fuming Fase begrudgingly said a few words to the associated press a few hours after the end of the match from their HQ in High Wycombe:

‘“Despite an impressive fight-back following some early errors by the forwards we feel that we were simply not given a level playing field.” When quizzed about exactly what he meant by this all Fase would offer was,
“The standard of decision making by the ref was quite simply appalling. There were at least three blatant fouls as we moved inside the Saracens 22, each as ugly as McTague’s cackling face.”
The incidents he was referring too seemed to be tackles made by Penney, the Saracen’s winger, which were marginal at the best but went completely unseen by the linesman and referee. The video footage tends to be obscured and inconclusive as well (the ref rolls made by Shaun M in each case were 1,1 or 1,2 !).
Ian Dickey from the Observer asked about the conditions out there on the pitch;

“With playing conditions making ball handling difficult for both teams we played well throughout the second half and were only denied victory by the officials. To be honest it was only Saracen’s greed that let us back in at the end and let Lol (Dalagio) lead the boys superbly to even the match.”

He rounded the short conference off by a scathing attack on McTague and the tactics of Saracens;

“It’s a shame that a side that I only had praise for throughout the sevens tournament felt that they didn’t have the strength to play us man to man and had to resort to such underhand play. I think that we can almost take that as a back-handed compliment as we move on to next weeks game at Sale with heads held high.”

With that he stormed out the room, with the accusations of ‘assault like’ dirty tackles still fresh in the Sale Sharks coaches mind next week will be interesting to say the least!

Meanwhile the press conferences held in Paris following the Stad/Sharks thriller were of an all together gentlemanly nature. Jonno caught Jones, the Stad coach, on his way to a welcome pint in the hospitality rooms, he had this to say about the match.

‘The real winners of tonight’s match has to be the fans of both sides who travelled to see there team. Considering the conditions I thought both sides played with a lot of flair. The wind kept kicking to a minimum and it was tense out there. I was surprised with the tenacity shown by the Sharks, considering our second XIV had held them at sevens the previous week I was expecting a bit of an easier match to be honest. But Sharks showed that at this level there are no easy matches and I felt proud that our defense managed to keep them out. A great game played by two great sides, I will tip Sharks to decimate the Wasps next week and look forward to meeting them again come finals time. The main man for us in my opinion was Fillol at scrum half. He directed the play in both attack and defense and made some fine decisions out there. Looking forward to next week … well its our old foes Saracens. It’s never easy to play at Vicarage Road with the stands packed in over the narrow pitch, the atmosphere is always oppressive. Both teams know each other so well and they are always the team we find it hardest to dominate … but as the great gridiron coach Vince Lombardi once alluded to … winning is a habit … and at the moment our coaching staff have the habit!’