A year to the day after Edinburgh achieved arguably their finest result so far under Mike Blair’s watch, they will return to the StoneX Stadium on Sunday looking for a similar score-line to that 21-18 win over Saracens on the opening weekend of last season’s European Challenge Cup.
But this time the two teams are looking to lay down markers at the start of their respective Champions Cup campaigns – European rugby’s flagship competition – and the visiting head coach has promised that his team have wasted little time reflecting on past glories during this week’s preparation for the match.
“I don’t believe Saracens will have had the same motivation for that game as they do for this one,” said Blair. “They’re back in the Champions Cup [after being relegated from the top-flight of English rugby for breaching salary cap rules in 2020], they have a really good record in this competition, and they’ll be setting their stall out to win the thing again [after previously lifting the trophy three times in four years between 2016 and 2019].
“We’ve got to take some confidence from the fact that we have gone down there and beaten them but not let that be the overriding fact,” he added. “We’ve got to understand what it took to win that game around our defence, out physicality and our rugby smarts in really bad conditions, and then make sure we can produce those things again, rather than just thinking ‘we’ve done it before, so we’ll do it again’.”
Saracens have won all nine matches they have played in the English Premiership so far this season, and have selected a star-studded line-up for Sunday including Maro Itoje, Owen Farrell, Billy and Mako Vunipola, Jamie George, Elliot Daly and the evergreen Sean Maitland in the starting fifteen.
There are a few familiar faces on the bench as well, in the shape of Andy Christie, who has been capped four times in the back-row for Scotland, and Callum Hunter-Hill, a second-row who has forged a solid career in north London after being deemed surplus to requirements at Edinburgh in 2019 and who was called into Scotland’s training squad for the first time during the recent Autumn Test series.
“It is going to be like a Test match, with the quality team that they are able to put out,” mused Blair. “They’ve gone for a six-two bench which tells us that they are going to come hard at us through the forwards like Munster did last week.”
Blair has made three changes to his starting fifteen from the side which flopped at home against Munster last weekend, with Argentinean star Emiliano Boffelli’s return from a groin issue at full-back a timely boost following the loss of Darcy Graham for the next two months with a knee injury. James Lang replaces the concussed Chris Dean at inside-centre and fit again Stuart McInally will add some valuable experience at hooker.
He has resisted the temptation to make wholesale changes following a couple of deeply disappointing weekends, which has seen his team squander a 17-7 lead on 35 minutes to lose 38-17 to Munster, a week after losing 24-17 to a Benetton side who had picked up a red-card with only 10 minutes played.
“It was our ‘rugby smarts’ more than anything else against Munster,” said Blair. “There was a few lapses in skill execution which gave them the territory they wanted, and then they scored a couple of tries and we started chasing the game a little bit too much, so we’ve talked this week about how we can shift momentum when it starts getting away from us in a game.
“We’re confident about where we are as a group. The last couple of weeks have been disappointing from a results point of view, but it is not a bad game to get back into it and show what we’re about.
“We’re under no illusions as to how difficult this game is going to be. They’ve got top internationals all over the place and a sprinkling of world-class players in there as well, so it’s going to be a huge test. It’s a great one for us to see where we’re at and how individuals step up, how we combine as a unit to put our best performance on the pitch.”
