Guinness Premiership, Semi-final play-off

NORTHAMPTON SAINTS vs. SARACENS

Sunday, 16th May, 2010 - 16:00 MSK

'N baie goeie jaar

Personally, I think it's been a pretty good year for rugby. Northampton have equalled their best ever league position of second, while being on TV in Moscow bars more often than images of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin single-handedly wrestling wild polar bears to the ground, Steve Diamond's Russia have qualified for their debut World Cup, and "London" "Irish" have found out that without a couple of key players they are nothing like their self-held image of being a mix between fifteen Waisale Serevis and the 1973 Barbarians. On top of that next week the Russian capital will stage the Junior Rugby World Trophy, when I'll get to find out if it's true that the Dublin fat man's backslapping club otherwise known as the IRB spends more money on oscietra caviar and white truffle hors d'oeuvres served on the naked body of a Persian princess at media events than they do on promoting the existence of Tier 2 rugby.

Yes, things are undeniably well in the rugby world, and got even better this week with the announcement that Moscow will host the 2013 Sevens World Cup. However, despite living in this rugby Mecca presided over by the wonderful Dmitry Medvedev, there is always some dark stain threatening to indelibly soil what seems to be a perfect moment, for me it's from today having the hot water to my flat cut off for 15 days, and for Northampton Saints this year, the ice-cold shower has been Watford marketing consultants Saracens.

From Soane Tonga'uiha's obviously good match-winning try being disallowed at Wembley at the start of the season at the behest of SuperSport, to April when the Men in Black took the Saints' undefeated home record and then celebrated as if they'd just successfully deflected a meteor from colliding with Earth by using nothing more to save humanity than Dewi Morris' face, and the several months in between during which Watford's finest tried to near single-handedly regress rugby back to the late 1880s, Saracens have done everything within their evil power to try and ruin the Saints' near-fairytale season.

Like most people, I have my share of guilty and uncomfortable secrets. There's the one about that time I wilfully cheered for Wales without having my head put in a vice by a Pontypridd bouncer, and then there's that streaking incident and the women's rugby team and the surgical procedures that followed… However, neither of these are as embarrassing as the fact that I am seemingly alone in not minding the numerous gimmicks the Home Counties-branch of Western Province have come up with this season to desperately try and attract new support - which have ranged from trying to stage a public lynching of at least one RFU referee to attempting to carpet Piggy's Patch with a giant picture of Richard Hill's face.  Not only do I not mind that, I also have a healthy respect for how they have gone through the season flicking Vs and purposefully royally pissing off just about everyone who has had the ill-fortune to come into contact with them in order to get wins and achieve their goals, ergo - I like Saracens.

There, I've said it. I. Like. Saracens. And were they playing any other top four team this weekend, I would be wishing them all the best. (However, when considering this admission, please do also bear in mind as mitigation that I am a man whose moral compass saw him actively wanting Worcester to be relegated to the point that I was upset I could only enjoy their defeat to Leeds on Internet radio and not actually see the tears falling from the faces of children with little rabbit masks painted on their faces on TV, and someone who doesn't actually mind Leicester Tigers. Well, not that much…)

TSSHAS

Still, as uncomfortable as this admission is, it is not even remotely as grotesquely cringe worthy as the image management atrocities regularly spouting forth from the electronic fundament that is twitter.com/saracens - its pronouncements often so downright offensive to just about every base human sensibility that even Shaun Edwards vehicle London Wasps PR FC would think twice before copying it.

"There is something special happening at Saracens," said every single misfortunate signed up to be part of Saracens' summer-long training sessions in how to become more like Steve Borthwick. However, if some of the quotes attributed to Saracens CEO and down-with-the-kids message board hero Edward Griffiths and the rabid referee baiting of professional Norman Tebbitt look-alike Brendan Venter are anything to go by, the 'Special' in question is a 9% Brew of horse urine and tramps' sweat favoured by the semi-comatose Scottish men who seemingly permanently reside in Greyfriars bus station.

It is unclear whether the life expectancy-compromising beverage bottled by probably the best brewery in the town will be the beer of choice when Saracens fans congregate off Edgar Mobbs Way on Sunday, presumably in order to partake in traditional Northamptonian car park activities such as dogging, doing doughnuts in an uninsured Ford Fiesta with a spoiler bigger than a horizontal lift tower, and being threatened by knife-wielding prepubescents in hoodies asking you to "bust us 50p" so they have enough to order you to go into Aldi and buy them a two-litre bottle of chemical-saturated cider. Coincidentally, two-litre bottles of chemical-saturated cider and free beer at 10:45 a.m. are the only two things known to man that can result in a fully-grown adult ever deciding that donning a giant bib disguised as a mediaeval tabard is a good idea.

For reasons best known unto the Northampton management, this will be the third time in the space of little over a year that the Fezheads, complete with sequoia-thighed cheerleaders and camel, will have been allowed to congregate in Saints' car parks for said free beer, before staging a semi-cut march on the Gardens as the Saints again host a knockout semi-final against the capital's other pizza-loving team.

Ask a Saracens fan what a semi at Northampton means to them and they'll probably say something along the lines of the reaction experienced by Saints supporters when talking about a 'proper rugby club.' If pressed further, however, they are likely to point to a string of painful defeats in different cup competitions. But this time Saracens fans making the march to the stadium won't be doing so to set off rape alarms, have fights in the crowd, and generally do for interclub harmony what Lehman Brothers did for the global economy - instead they will be full of confidence of seeing their team reach the Guinness Premiership final.

Stand Up for the Saracens

Saracens have every reason to believe they can be running out at Twickenham on May 22 after taking away Leicester's season-long undefeated home streak in round 22, and Northampton's two weeks earlier. Saracens celebrated their one-point win riotously with 'Stand up for the Saracens' – a move which, understandably if you've ever heard the 'song', irked Saints' caption Dylan Hartley so much it was as if some horrific mix-up had led to an oiled-up thong-wearing Graham Rowntree being sent to him as an interactive birthday strip-o-gram.

"They can say they don't like the song, or this or that, but the reality is that we've beaten them there," Venter told the press this week to shouts of 'heads!' in the background as a number of balls hoofed skyward by Derek Hougaard in rounds 6-17 started to return to Earth around him. Despite teaming up with Right Said Fred to commit the most heinous crime against music since someone decided the asinine nursery rhymes produced by The Beatles would forevermore be put forward by common wisdom to be the best songs ever written, and despite spending most of the past ten years being a poor man's London Wasps PR FC and most of this season attempting to drop goals from Durban, Saracens have regained some neutrals' goodwill by suddenly reinventing themselves as slick try-scoring running rugby pioneers reminiscent of the Samurai International sevens team.

This hasn't gone unnoticed by the Saracens press office, which would gladly have us all believe that Venter's every team talk is now conveyed down a mountain to his waiting players on stone tablets. Divine intervention aside, there have been a number of reasons for Saracens' recent revival, not least of these the decision to remove Hougaard from customs control at fly-half, where he made sure that the ball never made it to his centres. Ever.

The tactic of having Hougaard take drops at goal more times than Rhino have taken the pee out of Northampton supporters by charging them an extra £20 to display their logo on Saints clothing was a strange one, not least because of the wealth of talent Saracens have all across their backline. Adam Powell and Olly Barkley-miniature Bradley Barritt, who together spent the first half of the year topping the OPTA stats for on-field redundancy, have in the past few weeks made holes in opposition defences as wide as the Greek budget deficit, and wings Kameli Ratuvou and Michael Tagicakibau, the latter originally signed by Saracens solely to increase club debt by throwing away money on shirt lettering, have been increasingly dangerous running ball back from deep.

However, the biggest find for Saracens, whose contribution to attacking rugby until round 18 against Newcastle extended little further than staging matches on a ploughed field at Wembley, has been Alex Goode, who has proved a revelation at full-back. Like Ronan O'Gara in a Lions shirt, Goode terrifies you every time he has the ball, albeit for completely different reasons, and is developing his game into a mix of Fodenesque counter-attacking and Geordan Murphy-like steadiness. In fact, so good is Goode that he is set to be the next big thing Stuart Barnes decides to make the subject of the type of cargo cult normally only seen on remote Micronesian islands. Saints must be wary.

Legally binding

Up front, the scrum has proved more problematic for Saracens as it, just like their agreement to sign Tonga'uiha for next season to rectify their difficulties, has had significant problems with the term 'legally binding'. Welsh U21 cap Rhys Gill has stabilised Saracens' set piece somewhat, which at times was vying to become the first unit to try out the RFU's new uncontested scrum laws. Gill and Petrus du Plessis, whose first experience of Franklin's Gardens was a 96-3 loss while Saints were still playing amateur rugby just two and a half years ago, will no doubt be fired up to front up in what will be a key flashpoint in the game as the fallout continues to settle from the joint realisations that 'The Tongan' will not be training with Saracens come July 1 and that perhaps not asking the fourth estate to cover one's every orificial release might in fact be a good idea.

Indeed, if asked to rate the animosity potential of this fixture on a scale where 1 is a meeting between the 14th Dalai Lama and Johnny Wilkinson, and 10 is a reunion between Diamond and Jon Raphael, this fixture could be off the scale. Tetchiness and on and off the ball heat has long been a Venter trademark, and expect much dark arts action to see play as blatantly illegal as Estonian MP3 file sharing websites. You can also expect that should any transgressions be Saintly in nature, Venter will extend to the half-time interval by 150% to make referee Wayne Barnes patently aware of it. I can only imagine what will happen if Barnes yellow cards a Saracens player, but I hope that the reaction involves the God [sic] Doctor straying across Dorian West's sightlines.

One Saracen who is certainly no stranger to the sin bin is monstrous lock Mouritz Botha, who has cooled his feet on the sidelines in each of the sides' past two FG meetings. Botha has the potential to be the ugliest and most imposingly dominant structure outside of the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang if Saracens decide to contest the lineout this time, and he and the outstanding Ernst Joubert, who for back row aficionados makes Stade Français weightlifter James Haskell look the one-dimensional number 8 with the mobility of the Nelson Mandela statue in Parliament Square he so clearly is, will be key to Saracens getting go forward ball.

The Tribe

Another forward who the would-be Super 14 side will be looking to for big carries is the Premiership's undoubted standout hooker - Schalk Brits. Although having last week made an attempt to emulate his namesake and have memories of a great year eclipsed by idiotic use of his finger, Brits, whose surname alone means he has a less tenuous claim to be an English-qualified player than many of his team mates, remains the danger man who Hartley will have to show all his international credentials to contain.

Including Brits, a paltry 10 of Saracens' starting 23 against Saints last time out were born in South Africa, meaning fans' concerns that the SAIL Group would try to bring in the London Tribe through the back-door have been proved completely unfounded. Nevertheless, the players Saracens have brought in from the Highveld have proved astute acquisitions who have bought into the club's ethos and culture, meaning Saints' work will be cut out to leave them on the losing side as they did the Premiership's most famous South African import, Mike Catt, last week.

How will Saints ensure that the team with the most wins this season reaches Twickenham with a chance to win its first ever league title? Big performances will be demanded of several key players, not least Tonga'uiha. Double-teamed time after time in the sides' recent meetings, there should be a plan to utilise him from deep on early phase ball where he has chance to work up a head of steam big enough to introduce a blanket suspension of flights over northern Europe for a week, while at the set piece Saints' very own South Africans, Juandre Kruger and Brian Mujati, must dominate, the latter in the absence of the abstaining Euan Murray in ensuring that the Saracens loosehead leaves the field with his head wedged so far up his own backside that he is qualified to ghost-write Stephen Jones' Rolling Maul column in The Times.

There will be hope rugbydump sensation Courtney Lawes has worked considerably on taking restarts (I write as I see out of my window a bear carrying a roll of Andrex 2-ply and a copy of The Moscow Times into the trees next to my flat), and more importantly that Jim Mallinder has worked out a gameplan to stop Saracens using long passing to beat our narrow defence – no wing can be expected to stop a move on his own. (Unless it is Mark Cueto. Especially in a World Cup final.) The answer could be to introduce Joe Ansbro at 13, but more likely it will be left to Chris Ashton, seemingly the only right winger in England not to have spent the week wiggling his tongue halfway up Nick Clegg's digestive tract, to make sure his cover defence is tightened up.

Looking forward to being part of it

Saracens is an anagram of arse cans - incidentally the true term for the plastic horns their fans enjoy employing as an alternative to only having one monotonous song - and there is more chance of Mallinder blowing non-stop on one of them like (removed on legal advice - eds) for the duration of the game than there is of him employing squad rotation for this vital match. The back row is the only area where we might see some tinkering, although potential leftfield selections include Geraghty at full-back and someone other than Lee Dickson playing every single minute of the postseason at scrum-half, but I expect to see the Saints line-up like this:

Foden, Ashton, Clarke, Downey, Reihana, Myler, Dickson, Tonga'uiha, Hartley, Mujati*, Lobbe, Kruger*, Dowson, Best, Wilson. Reps: Dreyer*, Sharman*, Vickers, Lawes, Dickens, Geraghty, Ansbro.

With the Sarries side something like:

Goode, Tagicakibau, Powell, Barritt, Ratuvou, Jackson, de Kock*, Gill, Brits*, du Plessis*, Botha*, Vyvyan, Burger, Saull, Joubert*. Reps: Agüero, Reynecke*, Ryder, Melck*, Rauluni, J de Beer*, Wyles.

*denotes SAQP

Not giving Jackson time on the ball and not sending any aimless kicks to the dangerous back-three will be paramount if Saints want to celebrate on Sunday like Pat Lam running under the posts after a drop goal and to make sure Venter, who, if his arms were any shorter would not look unlike a T-Rex which hasn't eaten for several weeks, has cause to spend most of the off-season ordering Justice 4 armbands to hand out to casual observers in Regents Park next season.

Saints must stamp their gameplan down from the start and ensure it is they themselves who decide the outcome of the game. Tidy set piece ball is a must. "I nearly hit those cows, mate," a banjo-wielding Hartley told Radio Northampton after the Wembley game as a herd of demonstrably unconcerned Friesians ambled about behind him. Increased accuracy from him, and from his kickers and restart takers, are simple but vital improvements needed to send Saracens home with as much left to play for this season as there are Heineken Cup appearances in Worcester Warriors' history books.

However, I for one cannot pretend there is not a strong worry that the luck of a team which plays Saracens five times in one season and not once at Moscow housing project Vicarage Road can only last for so long…

Saints 23 Saracens 23 (before extra-time…)

*** Fed up of the two Jameses discussing prevailing winds over the North Atlantic instead of telling you that Chris Ashton has dotted down for another game-winning last-second try? BBC Three Counties Radio has the best local commentary on the Internet and overseas Saints could do worse than clicking here for coverage.

*** To remind you of just three of the reasons why Saints, for the greater good of rugby, must prevail this weekend: Oh. Dear. Lord.

*** Fancy engaging in no end of witty repartee and well-meaning banter with a group of people who this time last year wanted to see EdwardG strung up from the Wembley arch, and who really, really do welcome posts by supporters of other clubs? Just click here.

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