Toby Booth and his London Irish headed back across the capital last night quietly fuming that instead of closing the gap to Saracens in second place they had instead seen it grow to nine points with half the season gone.
If anything the head coach was more angry with his team's inability to take their chances, but he could not resist taking a pot at what he considers to be the lottery of the scrum – and particularly the way they are currently refereed. "It's Saturday night, nine o'clock when all the numbers come out," replied Booth when asked why a contest which started out as one of the few redeeming features of a dull game, became a total mess long before the final whistle.
"If I'm honest that's the epidemic with scrums at the moment," said Booth, before adding: "You don't see much accuracy, there's a lot of guesswork in how they are being refereed. We'll go back over it and have a look at it, but it did seem to be one way and then the other."
Other than that Booth was left wondering how his team could have spent so much time in Saracens territory, only to come away with a bonus point and that from a try four minutes from time. That was when the replacement hooker David Paice was driven over the Saracens line by flanker Declan Danaher, even if it did take the video referee an age to spot Paice's hand was on the ball.
Before then five kicks out of five from Owen Farrell looked to have settled things, once London Irish had lost their main kicking threat, full-back Tom Homer. He was only 50-50 to play and, according to Booth, was spent by half-time.
By then Saracens were six points up, but not operating with anything like the fluency they will need on Saturday when they head to Wembley to play the first of their back-to-back Heineken Cup matches against the Ospreys. They will also need a considerable advertising campaign if there are not to be gaping gaps in the 92,000 seats available. Yesterday just 6,240 made it to Vicarage Road and only the very committed are likely to make the Wembley trip next weekend.
By then Saracens may also have said whether or not the Irish international scrum-half, Peter Stringer, will be on the playing staff, something which his current club, Munster, announced on Saturday. On Sunday Saracens' director of rugby, Mark McCall, was suggesting Munster had jumped the gun.
However, given that Saracens have promised an announcementand that they are currently without both Richard Wigglesworth – out for the season with knee damage – and Neil de Kock, who had an operation on his broken arm last week, it is hard to see them turning down a player with 98 caps and two Heineken Cups to his name.
Yesterday they had 19-year-old Ben Spencer, signed from Cambridge in the summer, at scrum-half and 21-year-old Luke Baldwin as back up on the bench. Between them they have played just 16 games for Saracens, but Spencer in no way looked out of his class in the champions' lineup. It was just that no one else, apart from Farrell, stood out either.
As McCall said: "It was a dull match, a bitty match. The game never flowed at all." However, by next week, he expects to have Schalk Brits, Jacques Burger and Charlie Hodgson back plus presumably Stringer, who Munster denied was cup tied as he had not made the match-day 23 this season.
Saracens Goode; Maddock (Strettle, 6), Wyles, Powell, Short (Taylor, 69); Farrell, Spencer; Stevens, Smit (George, 56), Nieto (Gill, 49), Borthwick (capt), Botha (Kruis, 51), Wray, Saull, Joubert.
Pens Farrell 5 Sin bin Smit 12.
London Irish Homer (Armitage, h-t); Ojo, Ansbro, Spratt, Thompstone; Bowden (capt), Hodgson (Allinson, 51); Corbisiero (Dermody, 53), Buckland (Paice, 51), Ion (Rautenbach, 53), Kennedy (Evans, 51), Garvey, Danaher, Gibson, Hala'ufia (Trevianus 70).
Try Paice Pens Homer, Bowden.
Referee A Small (RFU). Attendance 6,240.
