Yet another match report with absolutely no hope of capturing everything that went on. Blame the players who keep raising the bar, even when clearing the last one seems too exhausting an idea to contemplate.
Headline is, Saracens won. They did it with a penalty, Alex Lozowski’s third, with the last kick of the match for a win by two points in a game featuring 72 of them. Lozowski did not miss a kick, but it says something that he was only mid-table in any ranking of individual performances.
Fitz Harding, Bristol’s captain, scored a hat-trick; his teammate Gabriel Ibitoye, a hat-trick merchant last weekend, was everywhere. Including, alas, at the death when his offence conceded the decisive penalty.
In summary the game was won by a champion side who know how to deliver results. Missing Ben Earl, among others, not to mention all those who left at the end of last season, they did not flinch, even when the tries against them rained down.
We had our first after 106 seconds. In times gone by this might have been considered a special treat, an unusually early score to prise open a tight game between first and second. But actually a score in the second minute has become rather passe these days. Indeed, this was only the third fastest try Bristol have scored this season. And we are in round five. Shoddy.
Of the first half’s five tries, this was by far the most prosaic, Harding driving over from close range after Bristol had kicked a penalty to touch. As if the players knew that, they launched into a try-fest, each one an attempt to outdo the last.
The next three coincided with a spell in the sin-bin for Ibitoye, who was the pick of a ridiculously busy set of wingers. Toby Knight bundled the ball over the line for Saracens’ first from a penalty to the corner after Ibitoye infringed during Tobias Elliott’s raid down his wing. Bristol responded immediately, another brilliant winger, a fifth one, Benjamin Elizalde on for a blood bin, broke down the left and turned the ball inside for Harry Randall’s try, the best yet.
Until the next one, Rotimi Segun’s for Saracens five minutes later. This time, Hugh Tizard galloped out of defence and quick hands left Segun with the ball and a lot of work to do. This he pulled off easily, standing up Toby Fricker and beating Rich Lane to the corner. Lozowski converted for a 14-13 lead to the visitors.
But that was comprehensively wiped out either side of half-time. Harding’s second, a few minutes before the break, was another close-quarter effort, but his hat-trick score – around 45 seconds into the second half – was sensational, a sweeping move featuring all the stars. Ibitoye broke, Joe Jenkins and Randall kept the move alive, and the superb Joe Batley turned it inside for Harding to run to the posts. Worse for Saracens, Alex Goode’s attempted interception in the middle of it all was adjudged worthy of a yellow.
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Straight from the restart, Bristol were off again, this try better still. Batley nicked the ball off the ground deep in his own 22, Randall set Harding away, he linked with Alan MacGinty, who dummied one way, then turned the other to send Fricker to the line. Breathtaking and Bristol were 32-17 up.
In a previous era that would have been it for any self-respecting rugby match in the English autumn. But we all knew Saracens would come back. Up stepped Elliot Daly. Two tries from him, the second featuring a break by a sixth brilliant winger, young Brandon Jackson, and a penalty from Lozowski brought Saracens within a point with eight minutes to play.
Then, with a relentless certainty, they resisted intense pressure from a Bristol side desperate to put them away, before building one last attack themselves. Bristol seemed to be holding firm just outside their 22, Goode lurking an unlikely distance away for the attempted drop goal, only for Ibitoye, of all people, to infringe. He could not resist making a play for the scrum-half over the top of a ruck. And so Lozowski had his shot.
“I’ve been here a long time,” said Mark McCall. “I can’t remember a win like that one.”
Well, you say that but there will probably be a better one next week.
