Marcus Smith excels as a stop-gap full-back, Sale unveil a big signing and Saracens 2.0 operating smoothly.
At the first day of Saracens' pre-season training, the mission-statement speech was delivered by the club's general manager and England coaching target Phil Morrow."Often you find a way to repackage something to make it feel a little bit different," he said of how he and his staff's annual challenge at the start of a new campaign.Owen Farrell, Billy Vunipola and brother Mako are all gone. So have stalwarts Alex Lewington and Sean Maitland.
But, with the experience and quality of Sam Simmonds, Luke Cowan-Dickie, Jack Nowell, Stuart Hogg and Dave Ewers having departed the previous summer, they struggled to maintain that pace, fading to a seventh-place finish.Saracens and Elliott head on the road to face Bristol and Gabriel Ibitoye next in a stiffer test of their title credentials.
Perversely, while it was Smith's first time at 15 in the Premiership, he has done decent time at full-back at international level, starting there in three of England's France 2023 matches and stepping in for the injured George Furbank against France in the Six Nations in March. Such was the severity of a July 2023 knee injury and the depth of Pat Lam's faith in the back row that Argentina's Santiago Grondona had earned a contract extension at Bristol before even making his first appearance.It is something that the Pumas specialise in with Saracens flanker Juan Martin Gonzalez similarly smart and swift with ball in hand.
On Saturday, at a sold-out Rec, Bristol and Bath produced another nine tries and an upset as the Bears proved too sharp for the bookmakers' title favourites.
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