A positive idea it may have proved for a league always searching for new ways to market itself, but the Premiership’s “Derby Weekend” does rather seem to stretch the definition of that term. A ten-team league may fit neatly together into five fixtures to be unfurled across a single weekend for ease of consumption, but the English top flight’s geographical spread is unkind for marrying them neatly together to fit the billing.
More than 100 miles, for example, separate Sale Sharks and Newcastle, yet the pair’s place as vital northern outposts in an otherwise southern league lend weight to their meeting. Bath and Bristol are the two nearest of the Premiership’s towns but met last weekend, with Bath’s long-standing rivalry with Gloucester taking precedence. The Bears instead pootle down the M5 for a meeting with Exeter.
The problem is not proximity for the league’s last remaining London derby. Nor any lack of animosity. Clashes between Harlequins and Saracens have fizzed with an intensity and acrimony for a long while, and particularly during the salary cap scandal that drew such censure from a particular patch of south-west London.
No, the issue with this fixture is that it is becoming as much of a foregone conclusion as any in the Premiership. Eight times these two have met since the onset of the pandemic and each time Saracens have emerged as winners – including two old-school thumpings at the Stoop and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium last season.
“They have always been a strong Premiership team, year in, year out,” said Harlequins senior coach Danny Wilsoon this week. “We focus more on ourselves, not just for this game but any game.
“Sometimes you can over focus on the opposition and I think this week is all about making sure we take our learnings from Northampton and put them into the Saracens game, fully aware of what they are capable of and how good they are.
“I don’t think we did ourselves justice against them last year and we certainly want to do that at home and put in a good performance that our fans can be proud of and that we as a group can be proud of, so hopefully the result will take care of itself.”
There was a thought that this round four meeting would offer an ideal opportunity for Harlequins to end their hoodoo. Saracens, or so it seemed, were in a soft rebuilding phase, adjusting to life after losing their captain Owen Farrell and a couple of other senior figures. Instead, three rounds in and Mark McCall’s side top the table with the league’s only perfect record – plus ca change.
It was Saracens themselves that were talking up a period of transition at the back-end of last season, perhaps not expecting the handover to be quite so smooth. Fergus Burke may have been recruited as their new leading man but the fly half has been more of a solid supporting actor so far as Alex Lozowski, Tom Willis and young wing Tobias Elliot have snatched the spotlight. Maro Itoje was working separately to his England teammates with a member of the medical staff at Allianz Stadium on Wednesday but has overcome a grumbly knee to captain Saracens on Sunday.
Harlequins are able to return Marcus Smith to fly half after an injury-enforced shift to full-back last weekend. Three away points is not necessarily a bad return from tough trips to Sale and Northampton in the opening weeks of the season, yet in a league more competitive than ever, an extended slow start may prove difficult to fight back from.
“Certainly I think the history of this derby has gone in Saracens’s favour,” Wilson added. “We all know they are a quality, quality outfit, so you have to be on top of your game full stop.
“We want to play a Harlequins brand of rugby and we always want to play our game no matter who we are against. We maybe haven’t got that quite right in recent times but hopefully this weekend we can show that we can put that right against a quality outfit.”
The early returns from the introduction of Derby Weekend last year were good, with viewing figures and attendances up. It’s prompted the Premiership to order a second helping later in this campaign with the same five fixtures welcoming the league back with a bang immediately after the Six Nations.
That scheduling is likely to again cause questions from coaches, who have not necessarily been best pleased at being without the England players required for three days’ training with the national team this week. It is a concession of the new Professional Game Partnership (PGP) that has nonetheless led to a strange atmosphere both at clubs and in camp.
“George Martin keeps saying he’s going to give us food poisoning,” Northampton captain George Furbank revealed at Twickenham this week ahead of a meeting with Leicester as Saints and Tigers worked together ahead of re-igniting probably the fiercest of Premiership rivalries.
“It feels a little bit weird, not being at Saints during the derby week. Normally you get a proper build up to it. We’ll probably have a very brief training session on Friday back at Saints but come gameday we’ll be in the right mindset.”
Chris Ashton, Matt Smith and others still sport the scars from East Midlands demolition derbies of the relatively recent past and while Furbank feels those days are gone, the rancour still runs relatively deep.
“There are cameras on everything now,” he said with a smile. “But there’s definitely still that rivalry there. It’s a game that you circle in the calendar. If you can get a win away on derby day, it’s a huge thing for the club.”
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