Kruis guarding against complacency

Saracens lock George Kruis believes there is a danger of his side switching off after the Champions Cup victory over Clermont.

Last year, Kruis said the semi-final against Leicester was the most difficult game of the season following the Champions Cup victory over Racing 92.

It is the same scenario this year. They have just beaten Clermont to retain their European crown and now face Exeter Chiefs in the Premiership semi-final at the weekend.

And Kruis is aware that after the emotional high of winning such an illustrious competition, it is always a challenge to come back down to earth but believes the side have learnt from last year and have experience in preparing well for one big game after another.

“We’ve got the same scenario this year as last season and we can learn off the back of that because it is an identical situation," Kruis told Premiership Rugby.

“We will definitely take points from what we learnt last year and we’ll be ready, we talked about that this morning.

“Controlling your emotions is hard because we were at the highest of the high when we won the Champions Cup, but we won’t be disrespecting Exeter in terms of preparation.”

The North London club took Sunday and Monday off, returning to training on Tuesday, and Kruis believes there is nothing wrong with a proper celebration.

Kruis added: “It’s hard, you work all year to put yourselves in position and if you win big trophies like that you’ve got to celebrate it properly.

“It’s a big thing of what we’re about as a club and you saw today in training, the majority of the squad were doing extra fitnessat the end.

“This isn’t a light week for us, because we’ve celebrated our victory well, but we’ll prepare detail-wise just as well as we would normally.”