Saracens save Premiership blushes with Champions Cup qualification

Saracens 62 Northampton 14

Reigning European champions Saracens squeezed into the quarter-finals of the Champions Cup by the skin of their teeth yesterday, qualifying as one of the three best-placed runners-up in the pool stage.

The London club, who have won back-to-back Champions Cup titles, endured a torrid qualification campaign, losing home and away to French champions Clermont to leave them going into the final round of group games at the weekend with their fate out of their hands.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

They first had to beat Northampton, which they did resoundingly, thrashing their English rivals 62-14, but then hope that other results went their way.

In particular Saracens had to count on Wasps beating Ulster and at the same time denying them a bonus point, and that’s exactly what happened amid 80 minutes of appalling weather at the Ricoh Arena.

Wasps’ 26-7 victory secured Saracens the last spot in the quarter-finals at the expense of the Ulstermen, and their reward is an away trip to Leinster.

The Irish side - the only team to win all six of their pool matches - will be favourites when the competition resumes on the weekend of 31 March-1 April, although they’ll be wary of a Saracens side that appears to be on the mend after a slump in form in the autumn in which they lost seven matches on the bounce.

“It doesn’t really matter where it is,” said Saracens coach Mark McCall of the last-eight clash. “I know that on our day… we’re very difficult to beat.”

Saracens’ qualification is a blessing for English rugby for had they failed to qualify then no English club would have progressed from the pool stage for the first time in the competition’s 23-year history. That would have been a huge embarrassment for the Aviva Premiership, which likes to bill itself as the world’s most exciting domestic league.

Two years ago five of the quarter-finalists were English so why the Premiership clubs have struggled this season is a question furrowing the brows of a number of pundits.

Writing in The Times on Friday, Ben Kay, a World Cup winner with England in 2003 and now a respected television commentator, suggested two factors might be at work: a different style of rugby in the Premiership, with English teams “keeping more players on their feet and competing in midfield”; hence English clubs have struggled to adapt to the slower rugby practised by other countries.

Another reason, wrote Kay, is fatigue, with Premiership players playing far more minutes of rugby each week than their Celtic rivals.

Two of those rivals, the Scarlets of Wales and Ireland's Munster, are rewarded with home quarter-finals against French opposition in the shape of La Rochelle and three-times champions Toulon respectively.

The fourth fixture is an all-French affair with Clermont hosting Racing 92 of Paris, who qualified courtesy of a nail-biting 23-20 win in snowy Leicester.

Champions Cup quarter-final draw

• Leinster vs. Saracens
• Scarlets vs. La Rochelle
• Munster vs. Toulon
• Clermont Auvergne vs. Racing 92

Ties to be played from 29 March to 1 April