Who was your MoTM as Saints had fun in the sun against Sarries in the LV?

At lot was made in the unfortunately increasingly fractious banter between the fans of our two clubs after the game on the relative merits of the squads.  For what it is worth I think the two starting squads were very similar in being a sprinkling of first teamers, some second string and a lot of youth.  For Saints it was Mike Haywood making his second start after a man of the match winning performance the previous week for Saints, on the bench however was Dylan Hartley.  It was also a chance for us to see our very own Russian express as Vasily Artemyev was picked on the wing.  This was of course not his first appearance at the Gardens having previously played for Russia in pre season.  It was a day made for running rugby and whilst the match did not have the intensity of a league match it was great entertainment.

The entertainment was helped by Saints showing some glimpses of great rugby, good defence and pace to burn on the outside.  Also, and this hasn’t been talked about too much but we also witnessed the emergence of another player in a new position – Scott Armstrong played a blinder in the centres having moved in from the wing.  His slick hands helped Saints over for one of the five un answered tries they scored.

First up an hot out of the blocks (and what might have been his first ever touch for Saints) was Vasily as he went over to score.  He followed with a second before half time and despite a couple of Sarries penalties everything looked very comfortable for the Saints at the break.

Vasily  completed his hat trick on 58 minutes and what a debut it was.  People worry about his defence but he looked assured under the high ball and was rarely caught out of position.

The other winger then decided to get into the act as Jamie Elliot scored the other two tries.  It was nice to see Jamie back and playing well.

All in all a very enjoyable game and nice to see Tom Wood, Dylan Hartley, Courtney Lawes and Soane Tonga’uiha back at the Gardens.

Here is what Tom Wood had to say post the game

What the Stats say

Well unfortunately for those stats lovers out there and I am growing to be one this is going to be a very short section.  My source of stats (and I know there are more than one but I am a lazy person – insert another adjective her if you want, I did) doesn’t produce stats for LV games.  Sorry peeps.

So, who caught the eye?

Once again my thanks to Claire for the fabulous pictures they really do help to bring these stories to life.  You may have noticed I have also added the post match interviews so you can see what the players said.

When it come to the voting thanks to the 98 people who did vote and you only picked out two people for mention.  In second place with 13% of the votes was Scott Armstrong.  Armstrong was not playing in his expected wing position, instead he was playing in the centre.  He showed flashed of skill with at least one (memory fades) of the wingers tries coming from a well timed pass.  He also brought more speed to the position than JC can manage these days.  I think this is a work in progress and we may see the emergence of a real talent here.

It was no real surprise who was the winner however.  Scoring with your touch and then going on to score a hat trick on your debut was always going to win you Man of the Match.  Welcome to the Saints Vasily and I hope you enjoyed your gardens debut in GB&G.

Here is what the MoTM winner had to say of his debut.

We now have seven different winners from the seven games so it is a rather flat leaderboard.

Full Result

Previous Winners

Vote History

Who wins?

Leaderboard

Players Used

I know we banged on about this last year and this being a World Cup year is an odd one but after seven games we have used 29 different starting players and no players have started every game.  There are however five who have only had one games rest.

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