A thrashing of everyone’s favourite pantomime villains was greeted with as much euphoria as one might expect at Kingsholm. Gloucester put eight tries past a Saracens second team, but the hypothetical goal of a place in the playoffs remained out of reach, after Northampton matched their bonus-point victory at Franklin’s Gardens.
Saracens, a touch more cuddly than normal, suffered their second-heaviest Premiership defeat. They did not look unduly traumatised. A very different team will line up next weekend, when Harlequins visit for the first of the playoff semi-finals.
“I was the person who made all the changes to the team,” said Mark McCall, Saracens’ director of rugby. “It’s always disappointing when you lose by that margin. We’d taken the decision to rest our XV for next week. We’ll see next week whether that’s paid off or not.”
Like any good professional outfit, Gloucester no doubt approached this according to that age-old adage about the next match being the only one, but deep down they will have known their cause was lost. No matter how well they played, how much they won by, Northampton were never going to fail to beat Newcastle at home.
Likewise, Saracens already had their home semi-final sewn up. To claim top spot, they would need Leicester to lose at home to another side towards the bottom end of the table, Wasps. Again, if not quite no chance, given Wasps’ pursuit of a place in Europe, it was another unlikely directive. So they fielded a second string, resting their big guns for the playoffs. Max Malins was the only survivor from Saracens’ Challenge Cup semi-final in Toulon a fortnight earlier.
Malins brandished his first-team class with an outrageous dive for the corner midway through the first half, but the ball just slipped from his grasp as he tried to dot down in mid-air. That was as close as Saracens came to scoring in the first half, but by then Gloucester were two tries up, their increasingly renowned lineout and drive the bedrock of both.
Jack Singleton showed an eye-opening turn of pace in the buildup to Gloucester’s third on the half-hour, but he scored the first in more traditional fashion. Gloucester sent a couple of penalties to the corner early on, driving Singleton over at the second time of asking.
They scored again from the same routine, although this time working a variation off Chris Harris in midfield. Ben Meehan played a switch with Jordy Reid from the resultant ruck, and Reid galloped to the posts.
Gloucester’s third was more swashbuckling, a turnover ball whipped wide to Singleton, who made 40 yards down the left. At the next phase, Adam Hastings delayed his pass beautifully to put Santiago Carreras over.
But when more than 60% of your tries have stemmed from lineouts, it pays not to drift too far from the script. Sure enough, Gloucester brought up the bonus point in familiar fashion, just after the break.
The chance was set up by the latest roll of the card roulette wheel. This one came up yellow for Tim Swinson, after multiple viewings of his tackle on Ollie Thorley, each yielding a different decision, including at one point no penalty at all. Gloucester sent the eventual penalty to the corner, and Singleton did the honours once more.
Thorley did not seem unduly ruffled. He scored Gloucester’s fifth try a few minutes later, burning round Elliott Obatoyinbo in style, before the sixth followed in regulation style, this time Santiago Socino finishing the lineout and drive.
Saracens replied at last on the hour, Malins scoring the try that leaves him as the regular season’s top try-scorer on 16 after a breakdown in Gloucester’s passing game. No matter, Gloucester replied again with one of the tries of the season. Which part of it to pick out? Matías Alemanno’s gallop to the halfway line, Hastings’s reverse flick to Reid, or the latter’s chip ahead on the run? After all that Louis Rees-Zammit’s foot speed and finish seemed a little ho-hum. Expect to see the whole piece replayed time and again.
It was a fun afternoon at Kingsholm, all right, enlivened still further by the 50 points brought up by Jack Clement’s try in the last 10 minutes. Alas, for the ever-raucous faithful, the tries that mattered were being scored elsewhere.
