Bruised and battered but Saracens far from beaten after salary cap scandal

Saracens might be a club who have suffered a few body blows recently but Munster fans arriving at Allianz Park tomorrow afternoon for the Champions Cup pool match will not find a squad who think they are on the canvas.

A 35-point deduction of Premiership points for salary cap irregularities, two losses in their opening three games in Europe and every other English team queueing up to stick the knife in. It has not been a great five weeks for the European champions.

Most other groups would fold and supporters of teams in other sports would be queueing up demanding for the board to be sacked. Their chairman Nigel Wray, whose involvement in businesses with leading players sparked the salary cap sanctions, has felt unable to go to away games, but on the ground supporters are putting a brave face on things.

Saracens have taken the points sanction on the chin, even though relegation still looms, and this week at their training ground in St Albans they were chin up instead of chin down.

And their fans are adopting the same attitude

John Trigg, chair of the Saracens’ Supporters Association for the past six years and a match goer for the last two and a half decades, said: “It is one of those tough times that supporters run into when something goes wrong at a club. We have had a lot of incredibly successful years and I imagine we all felt the bubble may burst but we did not expect it to be quite this way.

It is such a challenge. Your mentality shifts from being a top club and having a lot of success and expecting a lot of success to having a different agenda. Maintaining Premiership status is obviously going to be a big priority but we are still defending European champions and you are not going to throw that away too easily. It is up to (director of rugby) Mark McCall how they manage that.

Saracens are still 22 points adrift at the bottom of the Premiership and need to win their three remaining Pool 4 games in Europe to make the play-offs. But the general consensus is that if any team are capable of turning things around then it is Saracens.

Mark Evans, the former Saracens director of rugby, said: “They will survive in the Premiership, no problem at all.

“I would be amazed if relegation became a thing. Their squad is so deep they will be fine in the Premiership. In Europe, they are going for second place in the pool and if they get second and an away quarter-final they will give it a real go.”

Trigg is keen to stress that there is more to Saracens than their first team: “The one message is that when you look deeper into this club and what it stands for there is this strong family. It extends across the club, across the women’s team, across the netball team, the Mavericks, the sporting foundation and the unbelievable work they do.

“We support the club, it is not just the men’s team. The Supporters Association is one of the sponsors of one of the autistic programmes running within the foundation. We have a load of autistic kids being coached twice a week – they are the sort of stories that never get out but that is what this club is all about. If the club did go down it would be quite a setback.

“There is a lot of negative press about Saracens but it doesn’t touch on all the other it does.”

Meanwhile back at St Albans McCall is figuring out the best way to juggle his resources, Saracens are almost at full strength tomorrow and manage the pressures of potential relegation.

“I don’t know that it is completely parked,” he said. “But what we have found is that, at the training ground, the staff and the playing group have been great.

“Perhaps there is a little anxiety about the future and the possible implications of relegation. So we have had a lot of conversations with individual players about what happens (if relegated). Now that we have a bit of clarity about what would happen in all of the situations, people can just settle down. Players just want certainty and once you have some certainty, you can just crack on.

“We’ve obviously got the whole season in mind but things changed very quickly five weeks ago. The normal plan we had is no longer there — but there’s a new plan.”