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Saracens are set to move to a new home at Copthall next season but right now the reigning English champions are totally focused on their massive Heineken Cup quarter-final against ASM Clermont Auvergne at Vicarage Road on Sunday (16.30). - 05/04/2012 23:29
Saracens are set to move to a new home at Copthall next season but right now the reigning English champions are totally focused on their massive Heineken Cup quarter-final against ASM Clermont Auvergne at Vicarage Road on Sunday (16.30).
Both teams lie in second spot in their domestic championships, despite defeats against Harlequins and Biarritz Olympique last weekend, with both clubs targeting going all the way to debut Heineken Cup finals. Saracens fell at the semi-final stage in 2008 in their only other appearance in the knock-out stages and Clermont are attempting to qualify for the semi-finals at the fourth time of asking.
All those defeats have been on the road – at Toulouse, Castres Olympique and in a 29-28 thriller at Leinster in 2010. Now they want to celerbate their centenary season in style by breaking their quarter-fianl duck and lifting Europe's top club trophy.
South Africa’s 2007 World Cup winning captain John Smit, who joined Saracens this season and featured in five of their Pool matches, will have passed on some inside knowledge about Clermont after playing for the French club in 2007/08.
And he will have warned his new team-mates of the threats posed by players like Aurelien Rougerie, Wesley Fofana, Julien Malzieu, Julien Bonnaire, Morgan Parra, Brock James and Nathan Hines in a star-studded Clermont squad. Hines, of course, was a Heineken Cup winner with Leinster last season.
Saracens had seven players involved in the 2012 RBS 6 Nations, including new “finds” in 20-year-old outside half or centre Owen Farrell and lock Mouritz Botha, and are confident they can bounce back from the defeat by Quins that left them six points off the pace in the race for No 1 spot in the Premiership regular season.
Sarries stand alone as the sole English club in the last eight but have the carrot of playing a semi-final against the winner of the Leinster quarter-final against Cardiff Blues in England. They won the English Premiershiop at twickenham last year and will have two games in a row at the home of English rugby if they can go all the way to the final.
The 2012 Heineken Cup final will be the fourth at Twickenham Stadium and on each previous occasion an English club has carried off the title. Can Sarries make it a fourth?
The match will bring the curtain down on the Heineken Cup quarter-finals weekend with those prestigious semi-final places up for grabs.
Clermont full back Lee Byrne scored the decisive try as his side beat Saracens to go through to the Heineken Cup semi-finals
Brock James came off the bench to put in a match winning performance and send ASM Clermont Auvergne into the Heineken Cup semi-finals for the first time.
The Australian outside half was called into action after three minutes when David Skrela limped out of the action after only three minutes at Vicarage Road and went on to dominate the game with his booming right boot.
He ended the afternoon with 17 points, from four penalties, a drop goal and conversion, and gained huge amounts of territory every time he kicked the ball out of hand. It meant the English champions spent the game playing on the back foot and with this defeat went the last hope of English representation in the semi-finals of both European competitions.
As for centenary celebrating Clermont, they now have the chance to follow in the footsteps of Toulouse (4 times) and Brive by becoming the kings of European rugby. It has been their stated intent all season and now they will go head-to-head with the reigning champions Leinster Rugby – and their former coach Joe Schmidt in Bordeaux.
Having started at a cracking pace, the visitors and their highly vocal band of 2,000 travelling fans would have been unhappy to have gone in at the break only 9-3 to the good. But they opened the second half with a blitz of 13 points and the game was virtually over.
Skipper Aurelien Rougerie created half an opening up the right touchline for Morgan Parra and the scrum half raced into the home 22 before releasing the excellent Lee Byrne for the only try of the game.
James, naturally, added the touchline conversion and then added a 40 metre drop goal out of nothing. Another penalty followed soon after and with 26 minutes left on the clock the Frenchmen had a 19 point lead.
To their credit, Saracens threw the kitchen sink at Clermont in the closing stages, but failed to add to their single Owen Farrell penalty. It means the record of an English club always winning when there is a Heineken Cup final at Twickenham Stadium has been broken.
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