SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER! Bumper Saracens v Exeter Preview

Our bumper preview of the big PWR clash under the lights this weekend, where second in the league, Saracens, host third-placed Exeter Chiefs, currently snapping at their heels…

Featuring exclusive interviews with Red Roses teammates and now rivals – Claudia Moloney-MacDonald and Marlie Packer – plus Saracens head coach Alex Austerberry and Exeter Chiefs backs and attack coach, Oli Bishop.

EXETER CHIEFS

First up, it’s Oli Bishop, who is excited about the upcoming match and this particular opponent, as he tells Helen M Jerome.

What do you expect from Saracens? I don’t know if you spotted any weaknesses or flaws in their tight match with Bristol Bears?

Oli Bishop: Saracens are always pretty tough after they’ve had a game that’s not up to their standards.

They’ve always been like that.

They’re a team that’s bounced back very well.

We’ve got to remember that the first game of this January period they had as an off-week.

They then played Leicester Tigers, where they heavily rotated.

The Bristol game was, for a lot of those players, their first game in about eight weeks.

So surprisingly, they didn’t hit the ground running while they’ve had so much time off.

I think that they’ll have had a big week.

They know it’s a big game.

Saracens always bring physicality.

They are always tenacious and will fight for the full 80 minutes.

We’re starting to see them play a little bit more of a free-flowing game with speed of ball being one of the main things they are looking for, as well as the offload game.

So I think it’s going to be an exciting game.

It’s always going to be full of physicality, regardless of what the weather’s like.

We should see a high tempo game with good amounts of opportunities for both teams.

Can you tell me what Claudia Moloney-MacDonald – who is back this weekend – brings to the team?

Claudia brings a wealth of knowledge and experience.

She is a complete competitor.

She’s been in the league now for many years.

I coached her six, seven years ago at Wasps.

She is definitely someone that is very, very competitive, driven for success, but also has huge amounts of natural talent and leadership that on pitch.

What I expect to see from her is big runs, winning her 1v1 battles and being dominant in the collisions, but also bringing some leadership and some calm to the side.

Talking to Claudia Moloney-MacDonald herself, I asked her how happy she was to be back after her injury?

Claudia Moloney-MacDonald: Always happy to be playing some rugby.

Can you tell me about the injury?

Yep, I just had a pin put in my right wrist.

I was able to play on with it for a little while just before Christmas and then the Christmas break came at a handy time. Needed to have a little surgery.

Is that quite a common injury because I see a lot of players with tape around their hands?

I think quite often people have their thumbs strapped.

That would be quite common, I guess. Dislocating or subluxing (partial dislocating) thumbs is a relatively common thing in rugby.

I had a scaphoid fracture, so something slightly different, and just in my wrist.

It’s a pretty common injury outside of rugby as well, to be honest, just from falling over.

So I guess I was just unfortunate to do that on a rugby pitch.

Can you remember how you did it?

Yes. I got tackled into touch, actually.

And I offloaded to keep the ball alive.

But as I was offloading the ball, I put my hand up and it ended up going behind me.

Just overextending my hand and yeah, broke a little bone in there.

Now you’re back, did you watch the Saracens v Bears game?

Yes.

Did you see any kind of weaknesses you can exploit in Saracens?

I mean, I don’t want to divulge too much pre-game…

That’s the role of our analysis team, and players as well.

It’s about finding any chinks in their armour and weaknesses you can exploit or perhaps traits you can try and manipulate.

Saracens are incredibly physical.

I would say aggressive, but I mean that in a good way, they’re an aggressive line speed team. They really want to get up in your face; they want to get the ball back; they’re incredibly effective in a breakdown.

We have some things that we need to focus on about our ball retention.

You look at that penalty kick that Zoe Harrison put over in the last play of the game. I mean, she is just a fabulous kicker, probably one of the best ones in the game at the moment.

But then we’ve also got some amazing kickers too.

Flo Robinson at nine, put in a lovely 50-22 last week, Liv McGoverne and Alex Tessier are both very, very good kickers of the ball too.

So I think this game is going to be huge in terms of that kicking territory, playing in the right areas of the pitch.

Then, hopefully, we can exploit a few traits that we’ve seen Saracens show.

It feels to me that maybe apart from Gloucester, it’s been very hard for any teams to play consistently for 80 minutes in each game. I don’t know if you agree?

Yeah, absolutely.

That’s also where a little bit of experience comes in incredibly handy.

You know, Zoe Harrison has played in a lot of games that have had to be won in the last 10 minutes, whether that’s international or premiership.

So she’s had that experience.

And people like Marlie Packer are the same.

I remember a Premiership final several years ago where Saracens were down against Quins at half time by quite a significant number.

In my brain, Marlie nearly won the game for Saracens single-handedly.

I think she then went on and scored three tries in the second half.For Saracens, Poppy Cleall is the same. She’s played in incredibly tight games and is very knowledgeable of the laws of rugby and knows how to play those to her best advantage.

They’ve got players that know how to win a game in the last 20 minutes.

And I think that experience is key.

Also just the attritional load of the league at the moment, the competition that’s in each of the teams.

When you look at it, Saracens and Gloucester, have either lost a game yet? No, Saracens lost to Gloucester.

Exactly. That was the beginning of the season where a lot of you were coming out of the World Cup and some took longer to get back into the zone.

Yes, and I think there probably was an element of that for a fair few rounds at the beginning of the premiership.

I just think that the level of competition now in the PWR just means that each game has such an enormous impact on your squad because they’re so tight and so aggressive and very competitive.

So the ability of teams to go 80 minutes week in week out is even harder, because if you rewind the clock four or five years you might have a really hard game followed by a relatively easier game whereas now it’s kind of hard game on hard game on hard game on hard game on hard game.

You’re constantly pushing your ability to play 80 minutes, so I think it’s a skill we’re all working on.

Obviously when you’re on the bench or behind the bench, watching because you can’t play, it must be quite difficult for you, quite frustrating?

Yeah, of course.

I think it’s always difficult to be watching a game you’re not involved in, because at the end of the day we’re all players and what we’re here to do is have an impact on pitch.

So whether that’s non-selection or an injury or rotation, whatever it is, there’s obviously an element of frustration because you’ve lost your ability to have an impact on that game.

But on the bench, it’s slightly different because you have an ability to make a change.

There’s an element of excitement as well, especially when you’re there under the trust of your coaches to go and do a job in that second half.

I think there can be, if managed correctly, a real excitement about being an on-the-bench player that comes on and is able to change a game.

The way the season is panning out, are you able to look ahead much or do you just go from game to game so you’re not looking at the next weekend or the weekend after, but only able to focus on that forthcoming game?

There’s always going to be an element of both.

You’re always looking at the whole season, how you’re planning to play, how you envision your game plan and your skills developing over the season.

So you might be working on something at the moment that you’re going to use in a couple of weeks’ time, but that you’re not going to use immediately.

There’s always a lens to the… longer story of the front end of the week. It’s self-focused and that’s implementing things and developing skills that are part of the longer-term plan for the season.

Then, as you get closer to the game, it becomes hyper-focused on the weekend and the game that’s coming.

There’s probably an element of players probably focusing more on the immediate and then the staff will probably focus more on your season as a whole.

SARACENS

It’s always fascinating talking to Saracens head coach, Alex Austerberry, who I first asked about the see-saw match against Bristol Bears.

Sunday, straight after the game, that surge of emotions… how do you deal with that, where you’re trying to come down after a game?

Alex Austerberry: Experience is a great thing, isn’t it?

You know that as good as things can get, there’s also challenges.

People say: oh, treat victory and loss at the same.

I don’t think you can, because you’ve got to celebrate the wins.

Otherwise it’s a tough gig in anything, any profession.

If you don’t celebrate the wins it starts to become a very challenging space.

But I think the nature of this league is that there’s always something next, so it’s great to pick up the points and it’s great for the players to enjoy the post-match, create some memories not just on-field but off-field.

But for me it’s what’s next. It’s making sure we’ve always got the eye on what’s on the horizon and making sure we’re properly prepared for that. So to be honest, as soon as we leave that room, it’s: right where are we at injury wise?

Do we need to make any tweaks to the schedule that we put in place on Monday? If it’s a six-day turnaround like this week, it’s challenging, so it’s making sure we maximize that stuff.

So It’s enjoying the moment, but then back to business and back to making sure everyone’s in the best place possible to succeed.

Enjoy the highs, get home, watch the game another two times – and it didn’t get any less tense, and then, the lens, right.

Did it finish a different way when you watched it again!

No, to be honest, what I would say is I thought I knew what the ending was going to be, and you know, it takes a little bit of jeopardy out of it.

What it does, is it gives you the ability to rewind and analyse in the moment as well, so we don’t just get the snapshot of the live thing.

Sometimes it’s good because it reinforces your gut instinct and what you felt in the moment, so there’s not a detachment from reality.

Sometimes when you’ve got heightened emotions, you might see things differently, or you’re calling something black when it’s blatantly white.

The thing I’ve probably learned over time is that in those moments is where you need to make sure that your reality is actually attached to what is happening.

So watching it back it’s: were the decisions were what we thinking, what we were talking about? Were the messages going on actually appropriate or were we getting them wrong?

I think the clarity of some of the decisions that we made, obviously there’s some frustrations in it as a coaching group, just as there were as a playing group. But their ability to watch it back and go: we were feeling the right thing, or even: we might have done that a little bit differently.

I think the big decisions as a coaching group we got correct at the weekend so that’s one of the values of watching it back, as well as making sure you don’t get lost in the moment and let your emotions run away with you

I was talking to an Exeter Chiefs coach and player. And they were praising the likes of Zoe Harrison, especially for her coolness at the end of the game, and also people like Marlie, Poppy.

So when you look at Exeter, who are their game changers that stand out for you?

It’s always difficult.

If you name three, it’s the one that you didn’t name that has a worldie against you, and you’re like: I should have mentioned them.

I give them fuel!

The big thing for me is that the quality of Exeter is through the squad.

It’s a very, a very good squad, a very well-disciplined squad.

It’s got the ability to hurt you in lots of ways.

So I don’t want to miss any of them out.

But, look at the front row and the platform that that pack gives them.

You look at Maisy Allen, she’s been doing some great things this season, as has Maddie [Feaunati], she’s put in a series of quality performances post-Christmas.

Some of the unseen work of their locks as well, that heavy work, their highlight reels are relatively easy to pick out.

I think some of the industry of particularly their back five as well, is outstanding.

Then you go into the back line, and it’s hurt us over time, with its ability to pounce from different areas.

When you’ve got the likes of Alex Tessier, Liv McGoverne in midfield, they’ve got the ability to make things happen.

And then they’ve got tricky players in the back three.

I could literally go through them all.

That’s credit to Exeter and their programme. They’ve got quality throughout, and it will be a real test.

I probably will name more of them, so none of them feel left out and then say: you didn’t mention me!

One to 23, they’re outstanding.

They’ve really got the ability to challenge, and you look at some of the defensive shifts they’ve put in, how well drilled they are at set pieces, that’s an area where you’ve got to try to undermine that from them. Otherwise you’re going to be in for a tough day.

And I think with Steve [Salvin, head coach] and Oli, the way they’re looking to attack – not so much against Loughborough because it was pretty tough conditions – but I think if you look at them this season there’s certainly been an evolution in their attack game which is built on solid defences, and makes them a very challenging, testing team.

Everyone’s talking about it being the finest of margins in the PWR this season. But what do you think could be the difference between you and Exeter on Saturday night under the lights?

Ultimately, who can keep 15 players on the field!

Discipline is massive and it’s not just about 15 players, it’s who can keep the penalty count down, because if you give penalties away, you give the ability for teams to make big yardage, big momentum shifts.

That’s going to be a key factor.

And ultimately, where the games won, they won in 22, right?

So who can transition out of the midfield third the best, and stay the longest in the 22. Or not necessarily the longest, but who can be the most clinical and effective in there?

Equally defensively, If you’re in there for a long time, how can you stop haemorrhaging points?

Obviously five tries at the weekend against us is our second worst return of the season.

But if you actually look at the time spent in our 22 and phase of defending, there were some pretty, pretty big stands there.

So we need to be more effective at keeping ball and playing in the right areas.

That is not just territory, but actually playing with ball in hand.

Because it’s very difficult to win the game when you’ve got a third of the possession of the other team.

It puts a lot of pressure on you executing well.

So the team that manages the ball, then manages the scoring zones the best will be the team that win.

Ultimately, that’s the same for any game of rugby, right?

We talk about the smallest of margins.

It ultimately comes down to which team can execute the best when it really matters.

And I’d say that’s pretty much any sport, not just rugby.

Last word goes to England icon Marlie Packer, and I first ask her about the previous week’s cracker of a game.

Marlie Packer: Yeah, and that’s the thing, isn’t it?

As a fan, whether you’re just a rugby fan or a fan of Sarries or Bristol, the game on Sunday had you on the edge of your seat, you didn’t know what was going to happen, and it wasn’t even a game of two halves.

The first half was a high scoring half, then the second half was some quality, stern rugby.

So I’m pleased you enjoyed the game and that you’re coming back this week.

Oh, definitely.

So when it’s under the lights, which is really exciting, and you’ve got the fans crowded in there on a Saturday night, they’ve all chosen to come there. How does it feel for you as an occasion?

I think it’s a massive occasion.

Whether we’re under the lights or it’s a Saturday or a Sunday, every time you put on the Sarries shirt, it’s an occasion, you’ve got to perform.

Because if you don’t perform, somebody else will be ready to take that shirt from you.

And you’ve got to make sure you fill it and play your best game.

If you rely on past results, you become stagnant. People are going to overtake you, so I think we raise the challenge. It is different this week, as we don’t ever do 7.30 kick-off, so it’s exciting.

You’ve obviously got the men’s England game beforehand and the rest of the Six Nations so there’s a lot of rugby that day.

So it’s making sure the players’ energy they’ve got for match day, that they actually keep it for the 7.30 kick-off.

I was speaking to Exeter, including one of the coaches.

Got any intel for me?

I’m joking!

They were praising you. And praising the coolness of Zoe in taking that final penalty kick when the pressure must be immense, and also praising you and saying how you’ve pushed Saracens over the edge to win in previous matches.

Oh, that’s nice of them.

Yeah, I love playing rugby, I always put my body on the line.

It doesn’t matter who I’m playing, whether it’s Exeter, Harlequins, Gloucester, you name them, I always want to be at the forefront of putting a top-end performance in to make sure we get the result.

I think with Exeter, there is that rivalry.

Also, it’s a club close to my heart because I’m a West Country girl.

I lived in Yeovil, so it’s only a 35, 40-minute drive from home.

So, there is that internal little bit of rivalry there.

I don’t really know how to explain it, but you want to put the performance in.

This weekend is exactly the same as that for me.

Obviously, you’ve got the back row of Maisy Allen, Maddie Feaunati, and then whoever they decide to put in that area.

They’ve got a top, top six front row, all international players.

I watched a game, I can’t remember who it was against, but it was Exeter, and they were talking about how they can change their front row at half time because they know that the quality they’ve got in that area.

I think that’s known in the league, so we need to make sure we capitalise on small wins in that area, then also that we make big momentum shifts when it comes to scrum time and set piece time. And making sure we’re on the front foot for it.

Exeter’s coach Oli reckons you were slow out the blocks last week because of the break before the Leicester game, which wasn’t a normal kind of game. So he thinks this is why it took a while for you to get going.

Yeah, I think so. Obviously we’ve obviously talked internally about it.

I wouldn’t go far wrong with what he was saying. We had six weeks off over Christmas, then we had a bye week then our first game was Leicester.

And this ain’t talking down Leicester, but if things didn’t go right in the Leicester game, you could smooth over the cracks, they weren’t gonna punish us.

Whereas when you come up against the top five teams in the league, you can’t just smooth over the cracks.

You’ve got to make sure that you’re on it and you don’t have cracks in certain areas.

So it was a bit of a wake-up call, but it’s actually the same as the first game of the season.

Playing Gloucester that first game of the season, that was our wake-up call and we’ve performed since.

The difference from the Gloucester game to the Bristol game is that we walked away with five points and we can go into this Exeter game feeling really positive and confident in the way that we want to perform and the way we are going to perform.

Why do you think – apart from the Gloucester match at the beginning of the season – accounts for your extraordinary run where you even seem to be able to dig it out like last weekend?

I think we’ve got grit in this team, we’ve got desire, we want to win, we want to be the best and we drive standards, we drive within each other.

Until you’re in the Saracens bubble, people like to throw shade at it or have an opinion of how we are with each other or what we’re like.

But actually it’s a really nice place to be, we drive each other to be the best versions of ourselves on and off the pitch, and the rest of this second half of the season, we need to make sure we stay on top of things.

We talk about discipline quite a lot.

Not just discipline in how we speak to the ref, but discipline in the way we want to play, looking after the ball, set pieces and being disciplined in those areas.

They’re the areas that are going to give us front foot ball to then play the brand of rugby we want to play.

How much fun are you having this season?

I’m really enjoying it.

From a personal perspective, I came off the back of the World Cup, obviously a massive high, but for me personally, I didn’t get as much game time as obviously I would have liked to.

I fulfilled my role with the Red Roses to the best of my ability to make sure, come that final, that the team were best prepared.

But for me, coming out of that, I was just looking forward to coming back to Sarries and playing rugby because that’s what I love doing, at the forefront of everything.

That’s actually playing. The training, nutrition, media and everything else comes second to me.

I actually enjoy just being on the pitch.

Obviously that first game of the season wasn’t the result we wanted, but we could see what we can become with a little bit of work and a bit of gelling together.

You’ve got to remember we had two weeks together.

We had a lot of Canadian players, a lot of English players.

Whole different levels of emotions, feelings, what we want.

And a few things changed at Saracens, and we didn’t click that first game.

But actually, I don’t think that was a bad thing.

Obviously, it wasn’t ideal after we’d just come back off the World Cup.

But look where we are now.