Harlequins v Saracens: Five takeaways as Marcus Smith magic ends drought after most ‘un-Saracens performance in years’
Harlequins fly-half Marcus Smith kicks ball out after PREM Rugby win over Saracens.
Marcus Smith marked his 200th appearance with a try inside two minutes, a tap tackle that saved seven points and the player of the match award, as Harlequins ran in five tries for their first win of the PREM Rugby season, 33-15, against a Saracens side that spent the afternoon getting in its own way.
Here are our five takeaways from the Stoop.
The top line
The London derby went the way the table said it shouldn’t, like pretty much like every other derby this weekend, Tigers over Saints and Bristol over Exeter among them, and Harlequins won their first league game since June with a bonus point in the bag by the 36th minute against a Saracens side that arrived third and left having conceded five tries to the only team in the league without a win. Smith scored from his own 22 after two minutes, Seb Driscoll went over off a Fin Baxter offload at 14, a penalty try from a maul Ben Earl pulled down on 24 minutes put the England back-rower in the bin, and Cadan Murley finished a 25-metre miss pass from George Furbank at 36 whilst Saracens were down to 14 players for the second time, Fergus Burke having gone for a high shot on Rodrigo Isgró a minute earlier. Saracens scored three tries of their own, Rotimi Segun off a scrum penalty, Theo Dan and Nick Tompkins off mauls, and kicked none of them.
But the harsh truth for Saracens is that the set-piece was the only thing they got right. Burke’s card became a failed HIA, there was no 10 on a 6-2 bench, Max Malins moved to fly-half, Angus Hall took the kicks, and when Tomos Williams threw a long pass at Segun on halfway at 54 minutes with the game still there to be chased, Segun dropped it, Will Porter picked it up and ran 50 metres to score. 13 penalties by the 47th minute, six points left on the tee, a knock-on with the line open and two maul pull-downs in a half is a strange afternoon for a club built on doing the boring things properly.
The numbers back the shape of the naked eye; Quins had 59 per cent of the ball in the first half, built 81 rucks to 64, kicked 591 metres to 417, carried for 421 to 390 and won the turnover count eight to five; Saracens went 100 per cent at the scrum to Quins’ 88 and made 139 tackles to 91. Murley carried 12 times for 117 metres and four clean breaks, the most on either side by a distance, and Quins go to Sandy Park next Saturday with five points and their season started.
Where the game was won
It all boiled down to the Saracens handling and discipline errors, and in what Quins did with them. Here’s the thing: this wasn’t a defensive masterclass in the tackle-completion sense, because Quins missed 31 tackles to Saracens’ 25 and finished at 61 per cent, but it was a defence that produced things, eight turnovers won, Smith’s scramble tackle on Lucio Cinti at 68 minutes that Quins turned over two phases later, and a line coming up fast enough that Williams felt he had to throw the pass that lost the game. Jordan Turner-Hall’s two-man tackles knocked Saracens’ carriers back behind the gainline all afternoon, which is why Saracens built only 64 rucks and why 139 tackles produced nothing more than two maul tries.
The moment that decided the first half came at 26 minutes with Saracens on 14. They’d gone down the left touchline against a Quins fold that hadn’t arrived, Segun flicked the ball back inside from the touchline and Malins had the run-in from 30 metres, but Smith, running back from the far side of the pitch, got a hand to his ankle and Malins knocked on with the line in front of him. Seven points not scored at 21-5 is a 14-point swing, and with Saracens back down to 14 nine minutes later for Burke’s card, Earl having only just returned, that was the chance.
Smith and Furbank
Smith’s try took 92 seconds. Quins turned back on the short side, Saracens overfolded, Smith came out the back going left, Furbank got through half a tackle and put the offload away, and Smith ran the support line down the middle of the pitch from his own 22 to score and convert his 38th Premiership try. That’s the Smith-Furbank axis in one movement: Furbank turning up at 12, at 13, at first receiver on the far side, and Smith playing flat enough on the gainline that the miss pass is on before the defence has set. The Murley try on 36 minutes was the same thing from a different angle, Saracens narrowed by a body in the bin, Malins held in by the numbers mismatch, and Furbank’s 25-metre pass going over everybody to the wing.
Porter, back in the side alongside Smith this week, made 70 passes, beat three defenders and scored the try that ended the contest, and Quins’ ruck speed at 3.8 seconds inside the first half-hour came from committing two to the breakdown and keeping 13 on their feet. It only works when Saracens aren’t competing for the ball, and for 80 minutes they didn’t. A word for Luke Northmore, making his fifth start in nine months and holding the outside of the 13 channel whilst Furbank wandered through it, and for Bryn Bradley, whose 14 passes and a turnover won were the quiet work that let the pair of them play.
Saracens shoot themselves
Make no mistake, the Saracens set-piece was good. Rhys Carré had Ollie Streeter folding at 18 and 30 minutes, the first of them the platform for Segun’s try, and Dan and Tompkins both scored off mauls that Quins couldn’t hold. Maro Itoje stole two lineouts and made 10 tackles, Nathan Michelow and Tompkins made 14 each, and Dan beat eight defenders, the most on the pitch. The pack wasn’t the problem.
Everything between the set-pieces was. Earl pulled a maul down at 20 and got away with it, pulled another down at 24 and didn’t, and the penalty try cost seven. Burke’s high shot at 35 cost 10 minutes, then the afternoon, then the only fly-half in a 23 that had left Owen Farrell out; Brendan Venter can pick a 6-2 for the 50-70 window, but a 6-2 with no 10 on it is a bench for a game that didn’t happen. 13 penalties by the 47th minute meant Quins took the corner rather than the posts and scored twice from it. Three conversions missed by three different kickers, Burke, Malins and Hall, is six points on an afternoon the gap was 18, and Williams’ pass at 54 was a captain’s error in all but the armband. The most un-Saracens performance in years, which is the kindest reading, because the other one is that nine changes from Galway and no Farrell left Venter with the wrong 23 for a derby.
England watch
Steve Borthwick’s squad is out and this one gave him a few things to think about. Baxter played 45 minutes on his first start in 10 months, scrummaged without going backwards and threw the offload for Driscoll’s try, which is the loosehead picture Borthwick wanted and he’s recalled after only half a game. Sam Riley outplayed Dan on his own throw, peeled 15 metres off the back of a maul at 47 and left at 57 with the hooker argument at Quins settled for now, but Riley not yet included. Smith’s day was sensational, a try, two try-saving tackles and the ball on the line all afternoon, and Furbank’s 14 caps look a thin return for a full-back doing this to Saracens. Itoje, on the losing side, was the best forward on the pitch. For Wales, Driscoll, qualified through his father and a Wales U20 in 2023 alongside Bradley, is the ball-carrying back-rower they haven’t got, a clean break, a try and five passes before Will Evans took over at 55 minutes.
Five tries, a bonus point, a first PREM win, and Smith’s 200th done with a try at one end and a tap tackle at the other. Somewhere in the stands at the Stoop, we suspect, the Harlequins supporters who sat through Bath on the opening night and then Leicester and Sale away finally saw the side they’d been promised in August.
READ MORE: Harlequins v Saracens: Result, scorers, match stats, line-ups
