Saracens vs Glasgow, Saturday 30th March

First topic message reminder :

Date: Saturday 30th March
Venue: Allianz Park, Sort of near Mill Hill but really in the middle of bloody nowhere, London
Time: 15:15
Channel: BT Sport

Tale of the tape:
Saracens
4 English Premierships, 2 champions cups and a partridge in a pear tree
Beat Glasgow handily earlier this year
Don’t particularly like Ryan Wilson

Glasgow
The only professional team in Scotland that play what we call rugby union (we’re not sure what game the flouncing ones from the east are playing)
Once and future Pro14 Champions
Also not that fond of Ryan Wilson but he’s like that mate that always gets you into trouble but he’s still a mate

Word from Scotstoun is that Battleship Griggtempkin has undergone surgery to remove barnacles fro his ankle and will be out for 8 weeks.

George Turner ha been signed off for the rest of the season due to repeated concussion.

Following DD's news, I do applaud the SRU for choosing to err on the side of caution where head knocks are concerned. nless of course the players are in a bad way because they were not rested much earlier.

Shame about Turner I really rate the boy!

Barnacles on the ankle? Is that a condition that affects people who go surfing?

LondonTiger wrote:

EST wrote:I wonder if our front row could have the edge over Barrington, George and Judge - are those Sarries starting props?

Barrington and Judge are solid but not in the same class as Mako and Figallo. Slightly surprised that Koch is on the bench, but he has not been on top form.

Of course, how did I forget those two! I'm not sure it will hugely matter as Sarries will have Kruis and Skelton offering their not inconsiderable weight to shore up the scrum, whereas Glasgow have Swinson and Cummings...

One area we might get some change in is our speed to the breakdown - Itoje, Wray and Billy are not the most mobile trio. The last two meeting, Sarries combated that by just blasting us off the ball (including several borderline clearouts) - we need to make sure we can survive that.

Has Gray's form dropped so much that he's really behind Swinson and Cummings??

RDW wrote:Has Gray's form dropped so much that he's really behind Swinson and Cummings??

I think part of the rationale is that we have seriously fallen away in the last 20mins of the previous two games - Sarries brought on Will Skelton last time, whereas we brought on Matt Smith etc. etc.

I think it's actually a good tactic to hold him back, along with the Nuke we will at least have some brawn to come in.

JG actually had a really good impact off the bench for Scotland in the 6N. Looked much more back to his old self

Maybe he needs to be eased back into his old form gradually and he does certainly shore up our bench. To have him coming on as Skelton goes off could be huge

Nah its bonkers to hold the better player back and only play him for 20 mins instead of 60.

JG on the bench can only be that Rennie feels he'll get more for longer out of Cummings and Swinson. JG could be nursing something we don't know about or his fitness it gone. Who knows

tigertattie wrote:Nah its bonkers to hold the better player back and only play him for 20 mins instead of 60.

JG on the bench can only be that Rennie feels he'll get more for longer out of Cummings and Swinson. JG could be nursing something we don't know about or his fitness it gone. Who knows

You just wonder if JG has not been overplayed the past few years and that it may be taking its toll. He rarely gets injured and the sheer volume of tackling and carrying he does is going to take its toll. Up till recently he almost always plays the full 80 mins as well.

Maybe they have just taken the conscious decision to ease back his workload a bit and try to go for more quality over quantity. He was in danger of being completely flogged.

To be fair as well, Cummings and Swinson are playing well and are both maybe a little bit more mobile than JG if we are going to try and run them off the park in the first half.

Something has not been quite right about Johnny this season and if little twealks like this help to find out what it is, then that is no bad thing.

Let’s be honest, Tiny Tim is in to be the designated sh1thouse now that Batman is crocked. If Batman isn’t waterboy I suspect he’ll be in the stands on the beers shouting abuse.

Every time Farrell goes for a clearing kick Swinson will be there for the chargedown leaving elbows, knees and everything else in as he does.

Cummings has been playing really well, and Rennie’s philosophy seems to be that age doesn’t matter as long as you’re good enough.

Batman will be in the building

There was a Warriors photo of him getting off the plane with the rest of the team!

At the very least Glasgow have a puncher's chance.

If we can stay in the game for the first 50 then I think we'll be the stronger team in the latter stages.

Sounds easy!

Jimbo is right. It’s European knockout rugby - anything can happen particularly with Glasgow who can beat anybody on their day.

If there’s any time for blind optimism it’s now. To put you in the mood:

Never to be forgotten!

Some more absolute filth.



My favourite is the absolutely needlessly dummy to Maitland before he flops over.

Right Glasgow. Let’s get stuck into these Saracen fellas

#WeAreWarriors (well, for today anyway)

Farrell out.

I think with Sarries system it won't make to much difference to the end result.

See. Told you Glasgow could win this

Glasgow’s new peroxide blonde full back is almost as good as the bald one they used to have

Wow great start for Glasgow

And now a great response from Sarries

Nige got that wrong imho.

great tries so far from both teams.

LW continues to shine ...

Is Dalaglio the stupidest commentator in rugby?

LondonTiger wrote:Is Dalaglio the stupidest commentator in rugby?

Maybe not just in rugby. He keeps his job purely on reputation. For someone who played at such a high level he seems to have little understanding of the laws. Perhaps that's why he was called 70 minute.

He's certainly a finalist ...

Nice kick but that scrum pen looked wrong to me - Glasgow prop lost his bind for me.

Elliot Daly & Mike Brown are fine players but England would be a better team if Liam Williams was at full back for us. Brown's spikiness and solidity with skill like Daly.

Yep I'd take LW in a second ...

This is getting painful for the Weegies

Heaf wrote:Yep I'd take LW in a second ...

Not many teams in the world wouldn't. At the minute he's right up there.

Glasgow's defence can't seem to live with the Saracens power game.

Ouch.

Didn't watch it, but well done to Sarries.

Well that was a terrible second half for Glasgow. Really allowed them to bully us.

Notes from the game
- Swinson was injured right in front of us and it looks like he will be done until 2020. I am not his biggest fan, but he is a good club player and would have been great in for the early stages of next season. Hopefully it is not as serious as it appeared

- Owens did not seem consistent and most 50-50 calls went the way of Sarries it felt like. A couple of Sarries tries in particular were built off those decisions. Also Hogg's kicking gave position repeatedly when the game was somewhat competitive and gave Sarries a huge advantage

- Hogg had an awful game. You can't dye your hair like that and play that poorly. He set up a couple of things but it was far too late in the day. Hughes was poor too

- We got beat on the outside and it was hard to see if it was Sarries getting decent ball, Glasgow not shifting appropriately or the centres not defending the space well. I would tend to say it was not shifting appropriately

- Price seemed to be creating a bit and doing his best G Horne impression. G Horne coming on was still a step up in pace

- Saracens are monstrous yet I think a team can target the scrum with a more pliant ref. They appeared to struggle a bit early on with Kruis-Skelton in the boiler room and Itoje-B Vunipola in the back row which is not a light pack

- Lozowski is a really good player and would have plenty more caps if it was Scotland, Ireland, Wales or Aus. If I am Wasps/Gloucester/Sale/Leicester/Northampton, I am pointing at Daly and saying do you really want to be a back-up on 2/3 the money you could get here. Leicester in particular, would be an interesting fit with Tuilagi at 12 and Lozowski doing the Slade role

- I thought Sarries had a set-up like Exeter at Sandy Park. It is nowhere near. The road was fairly busy where they were trying to stack shuttle buses and they could with a turn in. The stadium did not feel purpose built. I was not surprised that not too many people appeared to want to hang around for the women's game

- Got to choose between Leinster, Munster, Sarries or a French team for the finals...I will probably support either of the French teams with Russell and R Gray out there

Just back from the game.

We got well stuffed really, not much more to saythan that.

Saracens are one of the top 4 sides in Europe and we are one of the top 8. That is probably a good summary of where both teams are at.

Still we had a good day in the sunshine and an excellent curry in Brick Lane on the way home.

It is now all about the league for us, our season is not over.

How good was Alex Goode.

Awesome all rounder who should be in the England squad.

Would love Bath to sign him.

LondonTiger wrote:Is Dalaglio the stupidest commentator in rugby?

Nice sensible question, and you had the nerve to hand out a 24hr ban.

Total abuse of power IMHO.

Yeah Barnes is thicker.

Yeh I agree with that.

A brilliant and ruthless performance by Sarries which has gone under the radar a bit. They really do look the business again after a bit of a slump by their high standards. Some cracking tries. Glasgow looked a bit shell shocked for much of the game. Such an impressive side in attack and defence.

Finally watched the game this afternoon and it was much as I thought having seen it live at the ground.

They just went up a gear in the second half and took the game away from us, we just could not compete and our heads definitely seemed to drop a bit when the game had clearly gone.

To many bad mistakes from players like Hogg who you would expect better of, though to be fair he has not played for a good while and boy did they punish us.

Well done Sarris, I would say them and Toulouse look like the form teams to beat at the moment, though Leinster will no doubt be hard to beat at home.

Another nice day out at Allianz but i really hope that we get to go somewhere else next season!

I wonder what Ryan Wilson has to say