New signing

Is Warren Gatland reading our threads on where our Nick fits best

Every time I see him play he looks better. Kind of reminds me a bit of JMG.

Warning, wall of text incoming.

So the dust has settled and the adrenaline worn off after yesterday’s match. I’m bored on a Sunday so thought I’d do a thread on where we are going into the 6Ns break (which should’ve begun last week but let’s breeze past that) and what we should do going forward. If you want to skip my incoherent ramblings and just comment then crack on.

We had a surprisingly strong start to the season which was slightly derailed by an injury crisis at fly half. The second block has proved more challenging with a long stretch of matches including the Champions cup. A spectrum of performance levels ranging from good (Bulls, Saints, Bristol) to down right awful (Bath, Newcastle, Castres).

There are, however, overarching concerns. Whilst we are in a rebuilding phase, our usual starting XV only really has Elliott in as a youngster and Burke who is older but not played a lot of first class rugby. The rest are senior players, a lot of whom are current or former internationals. I’d understand the rebuild comments more if we were starting more youngsters.

Now, the usual refrain is that you rebuild by focusing on set piece and defence then working attack into things.

Let’s start with set piece. The scrum has absolutely been a success so far, the improvement is massive with Webber coming in. I heard on the commentary that we’ve earned the least scrum pens this year and I think we haven’t been rewarded for scrum dominance anywhere near as much as we should have been. Perhaps the perception of our scrum from previous seasons is still working against us. Lineout in general is still good considering the injury disruption to our jumpers, Dan has the occasional yips too but he is young in hooker terms, lots of improvement can be made there.

On defence we seemed to go back to a rush/wolfpack defence which was pleasing and initially worked but without Faz barking at the team to “smash” etc our intensity keeps dropping in the last quarter particularly. Our points difference in the league is -13, the Bath match has a big impact but it is still not a great stat.

On to the attack. We’ve all been saying it, it’s just not clicking at the moment, unless we play Bristol. The coaches need a new plan, the league is not a forwards based defence first one anymore. And even if it was, we don’t have the massive pack or water tight defence to make this work. What we do have is a massively dynamic and talented squad. I feel the coaches need to either loosen the tactical restraints and let them play or dramatically work on attacking patterns. Look at how Gloucester have improved this year by Skivington getting desperate and letting them play like they want to. The difference was glaring to see watching Saints on Friday with just as many absences as us but playing a skill based gameplan that suits their players ball in hand. Against Munster and Exeter we’ve seen the game is either lost or close to lost suddenly we can start attacking with freedom and doing it well in bursts. It took someone of Faz’s stature to show the coaches that we needed to attack more after losing the final to Tigers, I can’t get my head round why we have slid back to the old ways instead of building on that success. There’s not someone like Faz in the squad anymore so the coaches really need to come to this conclusion asap in my view.

On a personnel front, I think we all agree Hartley needs to start at 12. He’s got a great future and gives us a direct running threat we’ve been missing. We need to disguise our intention to pass to him a little better though. Hopefully Burke gets some good experience with Scotland but it might be beneficial to build a partnership with Hartley in a few prem cup matches. C Bracken to the bench too, IVZ has shown he can provide lightening quick ball before so let’s see if he can get back to that. He should be playing for his starting spot next season though. I don’t feel like Simpson has been given a fair chance but if the coaches have little faith in him then why block an academy player - again look at how good McParland was for Saints given the chance. I also wouldn’t be adverse to Burke at 15 and Johnson at 10, the latter seems to take the ball closer to the defensive line, the former likes space to run into. I also love Segun but we need a someone who can stay fit, possibly Jackson, maybe even Bracken the way he’s being spoken about.

The pack are phenomenally dynamic athletes and have great skills. They need to be used in that way with quick rugby instead of trying to grind out wins. The combination of Carré, Dan, Tizard, Earl, JMG, Willis, McFarland ball in hand could/should be the best in the league.

This isn’t meant to be a moan even if it may have ended up as one! I think we have a really great group of players and some talented youngsters coming through. However, with the new laws coming in that are promoting ever faster, more attacking rugby, I think we need a bit of a tactical cultural shift that would suit the players.

Change my mind.

Exeter 31 Saracens 22

Well, tough to know what to say about that. We were threadbare today but up against a Chiefs team who were woeful for about 60 minutes. From 15-10 up to 31-10 and a man down on 75 mins. Total implosion. I think most of us were looking for a performance over an unlikely win but other than a few Individuals I don’t think we got either.

I will say Michelow stepped up brilliantly today, massive future for him. Tizard, JMG and Hadfield got through a tonne of work. Johnson showed glimpses of his potential and Hartley carried well, I’d like to see more of both of them this season. I would, however, like to less of Tompkins in the back row.

I try not to bang on about refs performances (at the end of the day we were responsible for those mistakes in the second half) but Tempest was genuinely awful. How Brown-Bampoe wasn’t yellow carded in the first half for offside I’ll never know and I’m sure other people will be able to point out multiple glaring mistakes.

Time to regroup and hopefully bring in a few loans to help during the prem cup. The coaches need to have a rethink though, we’re not playing well at all at the moment and when things don’t go our way we implode and get a red card.

Been a bit lax publicising on Reddit. Oops.

It’s much easier doing the Fezcast when things go well! A tough one for us this week, with Jez, Matt and Duncan discussing the huge disappointment of the weekend. Teeth gnashed, profanities uttered, fingers pointed and steam blown.

With us all feeling a little better after a good old whinge-up, attention turns to the prospects of our lads in the six nations, and a change of England captain.

Might be a grumpy one this, but don’t be fooled… Sarries Family Forever!! ⚫️🔴

Saracens 24 Castres 32

First up thoughts with Tony Knight. Fingers crossed it’s not too bad but I haven’t seen someone stretchered off at the StoneX in a long time.

Secondly well played Castres! I was told that was mainly a B team, well they didn’t play like it. Phenomenal defence completely shut us down and largely dealt with our ball carriers, then were deadly in attack when they needed to be.

As to us, well that was pretty abject across the board. Defence non-existent at times, dropping off tackles and missing them altogether. No real energy throughout, even towards the end we were strolling to lineouts when we needed to score. Execution was just way off, it felt like anything we tried just wouldn’t come off. I have to question some of the subs. We were marmalising their scrum in the first half, it felt early to take the starting front row on. Even if you have to bring Jamie on then maybe move Dan to the back row or desperate measures stick him in at 12 because he was the only one making any yards ball in hand.

I’ll be honest this rather smacked of a team who thought they could just rock up and win and got their just deserts. I can’t remember being this annoyed/frustrated with the team in a long time. Honourable mention for Roti on his 100th match, he was always willing and didn’t get much reward for his endeavour before the inevitable injury.

Exeter away next up, lots of absences to contend with and they’ll be well up for it. We’ll need a big response.

Munster 17 Saracens 12

Well that was a proper European match, that was like something from the more glorious pasts of both teams. Physicality off the charts if dodgy handling and attack. In the grand scheme of things with Saints losing (and Munster to play Saints next up) a losing bonus point keeps us in a good spot for a home knockout draw. However I can’t deny I’m gutted we didn’t take the opportunity to get our first win at Thomond Park.

First 20 mins couldn’t really have gone better for us, our defence was great and our kicking game really causing them all sorts of problems. The second quarter momentum swung to Munster and we did well to go in ahead 3-9, partly because of a sensational bit of maul defence by Maro.

It always felt like whoever scored the first try would probably win and Munster hit a purple patch with their bench making a big impact, something we may lack in certain areas with the absences at lock and back row. Having said that we very nearly drew level with some lovely offloading by the forwards leading to a two on one but Sanjay didn’t give it to JMG on the touchline.

Disappointing in the end but you can’t fault the effort of the lads, they put everything into that and very nearly did the job. The attack is very much still a work in progress on this evidence apart from a few nice kicks early on and the chance at the end we didn’t threaten a huge amount.

I thought Harry Wilson was excellent again today, he’s really stepped up in the last few weeks. Willis worked hard without maybe his usual impact ball in hand. Gonzalez worked his arse off as usual too but I thought Maro was sensational today. I don’t usually mention him because you just expect him to play well but that was a proper captain’s performance.

Next week is Castres and we need to target the 5 points to give us the best draw possible.