Saracens vs Toulon

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Saracens vs Toulon


The English league leaders backed by South African and English financial muscle vs the French team 2nd in the Top 14 backed by comic book financial muscle (Mourad Boudjellal).

3 of the English backers of Saracens are on the times rich list - Nigel Wray (230m), Nick Leslau (200m) Dominic Silvester (150m)

Anyone know the wealth of Mourad?

Head to heads to look out for:

Farrell vs Wilkinson - the obvious one.

Borthwick vs Kennedy - the lineout battle.

Tomkins vs Bastearaud - the ex rugby league offloading machine vs the ultimate french battering ram

Vunipola vs Hayman - daunting challenge for the young Englishman vs the experience of one of the best tightheads in the world.

Brown vs Lobbe - two of the best backrowers in the world will duel.

Shame Fraser is likely to miss out because S.Armitage vs him would have been really interesting.

I could go on and on.



Alain Rolland has been picked as officiating the game.

After his last match my feelings are mixed. Should have red carded a racing metro player in the HC group match he officiated after just 4 minutes but he penalised Racing Metro a lot after that.


Both sides lost their recent matches on the weekend but neither will be too fussed. Obviously both have eyes on this match.

not to mention France whose negative style was an absolute disgrace. They at least have (had) the players to play exciting rugby.

Italy at least tried to offload counter attack and have a bit of fun. Wales did in patches and got better as tournament went along

dublin_dave wrote:
Italy at least tried to offload counter attack and have a bit of fun. Wales did in patches and got better as tournament went along

We Might join them at a future date now. Although I don't want to jinx Joe so I'll never say we're going to do anything until I see it happening.

haha fingers crossed. the epic moaning threads after the ireland games will be halved in length by this time next year. im sure of it

To be fair i do not mind losing but losing while being bored to absolute tears bothers me.

No team should play with fear of defeat in their minds. Or fear of making mistakes. They should always keep the ambition to attack and back themselves to get it right more than they get it wrong. They should respond to setbacks with line breaks.

If you get it right twice and wrong once you can still end up 14-3 up. Better than playing it safe and keeping it 0-0. And believing that you can get the accuracy right is where the lack of fear should come from. Because victory and defeat depends on your own execution, not opposition mistakes.

Of course you need highly skilled personnel to play this way. But with the French budgets, they have no excuse not to have highly skilled personnel on their books. It bugs me that the likes of Racing Metro and Toulon have resources and international talent the rest of us can only dream of. And all they can dream up is bash bash bash kick.

fES - that's the best comment I've read about that match.

Feckless Rogue wrote:No team should play with fear of defeat in their minds. Or fear of making mistakes. They should always keep the ambition to attack and back themselves to get it right more than they get it wrong. They should respond to setbacks with line breaks.

If you get it right twice and wrong once you can still end up 14-3 up. Better than playing it safe and keeping it 0-0. And believing that you can get the accuracy right is where the lack of fear should come from. Because victory and defeat depends on your own execution, not opposition mistakes.

Of course you need highly skilled personnel to play this way. But with the French budgets, they have no excuse not to have highly skilled personnel on their books. It bugs me that the likes of Racing Metro and Toulon have resources and international talent the rest of us can only dream of. And all they can dream up is bash bash bash kick.

I'd roide you, just for your feckless attitude alone.

Feckless Rogue wrote:No team should play with fear of defeat in their minds. Or fear of making mistakes.

Yet they do. The higher up the ladder you go and the higher the pressure the more it happens. This is due to coaching, fear of being dropped, fear of the referees interpretations etc etc.

Every single professional team in the world does it - sometimes. Look at New Zealand in the World Cup. In the group stages with little pressure they demolished France playing attacking rugby - come the final they played like a team that was terrified of the consequences of losing.

Saracens looked like a different team against Edinburgh compared to Toulon. But the same can be said for Leinster against Wasps rather than Clermont.

Notch wrote:

SecretFly wrote:

beshocked wrote:Hood83 I think Toulon do deserve the criticism they get. Only 4 Frenchman started vs Saracens. In the HC quarter final and semi they have scored zero tries. Reliance on the boot of Jonny.

They are a team of ageing mercenaries. Their job is to win trophies for Mourad. I think they can do that but it's not a model that people want to see replicated throughout Europe.

Saracens get criticised just as much as Toulon if not more despite having a decent academy. A healthy amount of English players in the XV. Oh and a smaller salary cap to work with.


I do think that some teams do escape criticism though. The likes of London Irish,Sale Sharks and Exeter who have a large contingent of foreigners in the AP.

Clermont seem to be idolised despite having as big a salary cap as Toulon and a massive amount of foreigners themselves.

19 in their squad. Yet Clermont are one of the most popular teams in Europe despite not being that dissimilar to Toulon.

Right on, beshocked.

The two reasons I love Clermont are very simple;

1) They have hands down the most passionate and amazing fans in Europe
2) The brand of rugby they play is incredibly attractive, the perfect combination of power and panache.

The biggest reason is number 1. But number 2 just tops it off. The inverse of all that gives you the reasons I dislike Saracens, respectfully. I don't care about non-homegrown players once you're talking about a non-irish side. I want to know if I go to an away trip in Europe there will be a good atmosphere in a sold-out ground, I'll meet some passionate like minded rugby fans and I'll see a good team put on a display.

Clermont, Toulouse, Leinster, Munster, Leicester, Northampton, Gloucster etc. all tick those boxes. Who cares what their wage bill is, or how many foreign players they have? All you really want is a good atmosphere, some good rugby and to mingle with people who share your passion for this wonderful sport. If Saracens could tick those boxes they would be well on their way to winning some hearts and minds in European rugby.

Notch I suppose that's fair enough.

Saracens fans in general are very quiet. Far too reserved in my opinion. I sometimes go too far in the opposite direction. Probably too often actually.

Instilling passion takes time.


FES I do like your comments on the match.