Exeter v Saracens: Winners and losers as ‘phenomenal’ Andrea Zambonin books Chiefs’ play-off place, Mark McCall bows out and Maro Itoje endures a ‘chastening’ afternoon
Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall (inset) and Exeter Chiefs lock Andrea Zambonin.
Following a 32-12 triumph for Exeter Chiefs against Saracens on Saturday, here’s our winners and losers from the PREM Rugby clash at Sandy Park.
Exeter Chiefs booked the final play-off place with a scoreline that flattered them after a top-four shootout that for an hour threatened to go either way.
It was a brutal, attritional arm-wrestle in a swirling Sandy Park wind, Saracens defending like the champions of old and yet forever finding fresh ways to undo their own good work.
Then Andrea Zambonin rose in the lineout, plucked one clean out of the sky, and everything changed. From that single turnover Exeter found their territory, their points and their belief, the game tilting decisively the Chiefs’ way before a late Stephen Varney try sealed it.
It is remarkable how one moment can lift an entire side. All of it unfolded on the day Mark McCall took his final bow in a Saracens tracksuit. Here are our winners and losers.
Winners
Andrea Zambonin: The architect of the afternoon’s defining passage, and then some. With Saracens throwing to their own just after the interval, Zambonin read it, rose and plucked the ball clean out of the sky, the kind of turnover that flips a tight game on its axis, and it certainly did. From the penalty and subsequent field position he manufactured, Slade slithered through, Charlie Bracken panicked and Max Norey was over from the resulting penalty for the score that swung the contest.
He then helped himself to one of his own, a seismic pick-and-go off the ruck that no defender alive was stopping. It is fast becoming a habit, his late try having sealed the win at Leicester only last weekend. The leading steal merchant in the league, and on the back of his work for Exeter, the Six Nations and the autumn, there is a serious case he is the form lock anywhere in the world right now. Locks are simply not supposed to shape games the way the phenomenal Italian is shaping them.
Henry Slade: The Exeter captain led from everywhere, and capped it with a try of his own, breaking down the left off Tom Hooper’s turnover before the move flowed through Campbell Ridl and Olly Woodburn and came back inside for the skipper to finish. He had been alongside Paul Brown-Bampoe earlier for the try-saving cover on Rotimi Segun, and his kicking from hand was a masterclass in touchline control while the wind made fools of others. He produced the break of the match too, the one off the Zambonin steal that prised the visitors open.
It was, all told, the sort of complete, two-way display many an England supporter has spent years wishing he would conjure in a white shirt. His one stain was a pass shovelled to Ridl with the line at his mercy, generosity that mattered little once he had a try of his own. There was devil in him as well, a running verbal duel with Maro Itoje that simmered the full 80. And Slade has gone and grown himself a cauliflower ear, which surely promotes the most elegant centre in the country to honorary forward at last.
Rob Baxter: If the afternoon belonged to anyone in a home tracksuit, it was the man who built the team. Baxter has spent the lean years since Exeter’s title-winning pomp quietly stripping the thing back and rebuilding it, and the result was all over Sandy Park. The turnover that swung the game, Zambonin. The hard edge in midfield, Len Ikitau. And in Hooper, a back-rower he both recruited and remade, getting a full stone off him and turning him into the dynamic force who spent the afternoon standing up the Saracens defence, delivering a world class performance. Three signings, three of the biggest hands in the win, and that is before the homegrown talent he kept faith with through the grim seasons.
Where the Chiefs looked tired and short of answers not long ago, they now look hungry, deep and dangerous again, an Australian and Italian core grafted cleanly onto the Devon backbone. For a director of rugby who made his name developing players, watching it pay off this handsomely on a day this size is the clearest signal yet that Exeter are properly back. The reward is a play-off semi-final at Bath, an away trip and a West Country derby with a place in the final on the line. Two directors of rugby shaped this contest. One was taking his final bow. The other was watching a long rebuild land at exactly the right moment.
Karl Dickson: This was a contest that needed a top referee, and in Karl Dickson it had one. In a swirling wind with the tension forever threatening to boil over, his big calls were all spot on under real pressure, the Bracken knock-on, the Segun grounding and every scrum decision among them. He let the game breathe and clamped down only when he had to. Karl of the best in the world at his job, and the bile he and his fellow officials take online from so-called supporters is a disgrace that says far more about the keyboard warriors than the man in the middle. World class, as ever.
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Losers
Mark McCall: The hardest name to put in this column, and an act that almost feels like vandalism. On the bare facts, the great man comes up short, his final act in a Saracens tracksuit ending in defeat with the play-off door swinging shut. By the cold logic of a winners and losers piece, that lands him here. It is, of course, nonsense. McCall leaves at the season’s end as the most decorated director of rugby the league has produced, six Premiership titles, three European crowns and a record five Director of Rugby of the Season awards, all built from a conversation in a St Albans cafe and a principle simple enough for a beer mat.
He owned the salary cap years, took the relegation on the chin and hauled the same group straight back up. One lost shootout does not lay a glove on any of it. He will always be a winner, because that is simply what he is, and fifteen years of history proves it beyond argument. A loser on Saturday perhaps, but never so in the only reckoning that lasts- his glittering career that remains the benchmark from PREM Directors of Rugby.
Maro Itoje: A rare off-day from one of the modern greats, and a chastening one for a captain. So much of what Saracens pride themselves on runs straight through their skipper, the set-piece, the discipline and the cold-eyed control of the chaos, and on Saturday all three slipped through his fingers. The lineout he marshals came apart under his command, and his frustration spilled over when he hauled Zambonin down at one of them and gifted Exeter a needless penalty.
He also let himself be dragged into a running off-ball niggle with Slade and a few others, his focus tugged away at the very moment his side needed him hauling them back to first principles. Itoje will have far better days, and the body of work earns him every benefit of the doubt, yet on an afternoon when Saracens were crying out for their leader to hold them together, the glue came unstuck.
Charlie Bracken: If you wanted a single passage to capture a side beating itself, this was it. Exeter had Saracens on the rack off the Zambonin steal, Slade carved the line open and the cover was scrambling, and as Bracken came in to wrap up the tackle he knocked the ball forward. There was enough intent in the way he played at it for Dickson to judge it deliberate, and the referee was bang on the money.
Penalty, and 10 minutes in the bin. What followed was almost cruel. Exeter went to the corner and Norey crashed over down the blindside, the very channel a scrum-half is there to guard, and which sat unmanned for the simple reason that Bracken was watching from the bin. One lapse, two punishments. Scrum-half is the hardest berth on the field to cover at the best of times, and Saracens had nobody to plug the hole he left. On 43 minutes of a play-off shootout, it was the whole game boiled down to a single moment.
Saracens’ lineout: One of the proudest set-pieces in the English game spent the afternoon in disarray. The high wind turned every throw into a gamble and Saracens never came to terms with it, losing three of their own clean and teetering on the brink at others in the worst possible areas. Exeter’s pod sniffed the weakness out early, Christ Tshiunza and his fellow jumpers swarming every throw and turning a routine Saracens strength into a recurring source of dread. For a club that has built 15 years of dominance on doing the basics better than anyone alive, watching the most basic phase of all desert them on the biggest afternoon of their season was about as galling as it gets.
PREM Rugby: A word, too, for the suits. Having spent years herding every supporter towards a TNT Sports subscription, the league chose the final, decisive round of the season to shunt coverage of the other four games onto HBO Max, leaving fans to either miss out or stump up for yet another streaming service.
Dress it up however they like, this is a revenue play that does nothing to grow the game. It is all very well telling everyone how much you care about access, but it rings hollow when the product keeps vanishing behind another paywall. Poor, and worth calling out.
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