Saracens serve Premiership notice with six-try victory against Northampton
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It was a cold, bleak midwinter afternoon in north London but the race to be crowned as England’s top club side in 2025 is hotting up. Saracens also have key upcoming games against the Premiership pace-setters Bath and Bristol over the next fortnight and this emphatic win over last season’s champions underlined their ambitions to finish top of the tree in six months’ time.
![[Nick Tompkins made his 200th appearance for Saracens in the win over Northampton.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/520ef16071f599f36a915e811fcb3734f9453f75/0_302_3000_1801/master/3000.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
If it helped that Northampton, 24-0 down at half-time, were initially miles off the pace there was no doubting the hosts’ superior power, aggression and defensive line speed off the back of a couple of encouraging Champions Cup results. Their aerial game also heaped pressure on Saints’ rearguard and the upshot was six tries and third place in the table heading into Christmas.
The fly-half Fergus Burke was among the beneficiaries, finishing with two tries and a haul of 19 points, with the home back-row of Tom Willis, Ben Earl and Juan Martín González all enjoying excellent games. Maro Itoje did spend 10 minutes in the sin-bin after a high challenge on his opposing lock, Tom Lockett, who took no further part in the contest, while Elliot Daly pulled out late with a tight hamstring but otherwise there was nothing to spoil Sarries’ Christmas celebrations.
Northampton were enjoying the warmer climes of South Africa last week and, until a second-half rally, here was another example of the difficulty in switching seamlessly between competitions and radically different conditions. The absence of their injured captain, George Furbank, felt significant and physically they were a distant second in a first half which could have been even more painful.
