Northampton Saints will meet Saracens, while Bath host Sale Sharks in the semi-finals of the Premiership in two weeks’ time, after Sale were the big winners in Saturday’s final round of the regular season.
Sale finished third, having conceded the fewest points – 384 in 18 matches – to illustrate the quality of their defence, after they beat Saracens 20-10 in North London. Alex Sanderson’s side had led the league in December, then wobbled with injuries biting and dropped to eighth, but fly-half George Ford’s return from England Six Nations duty helped right the ship with a win over Exeter Chiefs on 31 March, and they went into Sunday’s end-of-season “hula”-themed party at the club’s training ground in a great mood. The party used to take place at the house of co-owners Simon and Michelle Orange, but it ruined the lawn.
Back-rowers Sam Dugdale and Ben Curry made every ruck at Saracens “like Wrestlemania” in Sanderson’s inimitable assessment, and Curry’s brother Tom could be fit for the semi-finals. England prospect Tom Roebuck on the right wing made a brilliant jinking finish for one of Sale’s two tries, and together with the legal roughing up of home fly-half Owen Farrell, it helped balance the sight of centre Manu Tuilagi limping off with a hamstring injury.
Sanderson did not immediately rule Tulagi out of the trip to Bath on 1 June – Sale’s most recent league defeat came at The Rec on 24 March. As for Ford, he received an accidental black eye from Tulagi in the warm-up, and kicked the first ball out on the full and dropped the next one, but thereafter played with great composure.
Sanderson said of Ford: “He’s been phenomenal. There’s probably only a couple of players I have met with his kind of influence – ‘Faz’ [Farrell] is one of them. His [Ford’s] feel for what is happening, what’s needed, and then to communicate it concisely as he does, is second to none. Ben Curry is our captain but Ben defers to George – talking in the circle afterwards he is very much the mouthpiece. He’s a tough kid. He was quite aggressive afterwards, saying ‘we’re not celebrating this – we’re going to Bath’.”
Unhappy Saracens fans
For their part, Saracens had prepared to win and gain one more home match in the semi-finals, and it left some fans with a feeling the champions’ post-match farewell to 25 leavers was off-kilter and too much centred on Farrell, with the Vunipola brothers, Sean Maitland and Alex Lewington among the others bowing out. Maitland, the 35-year-old Scotland wing, was an even unluckier victim of friendly fire, as he hurt a knee in a collision with Elliot Daly in the warm-up, bringing his career to a premature end after he’d announced his retirement the day beforehand.
“We didn’t give the best of ourselves today,” said Farrell, who is joining Racing 92 in Paris this summer, “but we’ll dust ourselves off and do that in two weeks’ time. It’s a bit sad but I am very grateful for everything that’s been.”
And Farrell’s favourite memory of StoneX Stadium after 11 years based in the borough of Barnet? Not a try or a kick but the day against Glasgow in 2017 when capacity was temporarily raised from 10,000 to 15,000. “We had more people on and it was rocking that day, beaming with sunshine and a great game to play in.”
Wiese spoils his own goodbye
It was a shame for Jasper Wiese to end his Leicester Tigers career on a red card, after he was deemed to have dumped Exeter’s Ross Vintcent on his head in Tigers’ 40-22 win at Welford Road.
In his four years at Leicester, Wiese was initially a disciplinary liability but the No 8 tightened his game to the extent of being part of South Africa’s World Cup final-winning 23 in October.
But he blotted his copybook in the last two weeks, with a daft penalty conceded at Sale and now this red, when Wiese appeared incensed by a clear-out from Vintcent and picked the Italy international up by the waist and dropped him. Any ban could rule Wiese out of the Springboks’ eagerly awaited Test series against Ireland in July.
Bath most improved
In the latest example of a team choosing to rest its front-line stars, Northampton were beaten 43-12 at Bath, but Phil Dowson’s team still finished top of the table and will now meet old rivals Saracens under Friday night lights at Franklin’s Gardens on the 10-year anniversary of their 2014 final clash at Twickenham that Saints won in extra time.
Northampton are the only team to have beaten Sarries home and away in the current season, while Bath are the biggest improvers, having finished bottom in 2022 and eighth last season, and boss Johann van Graan said he was impressed by the “magnificent attitude” of highly-paid fly-half Finn Russell, who has fought back from a groin injury, having worked with Bath’s medical staff “literally day and night”.
Will Muir scored twice for Bath and is another wing to watch in the play-offs. Northampton’s Ollie Sleightholme finished the Premiership’s top try scorer on 14, four ahead of Roebuck and Exeter’s Immanuel Feyi-Waboso.
Finn Russell gets his and @BathRugby’s second try of the afternoon with a move straight from the training ground
— Rugby on TNT Sports (@rugbyontnt) May 18, 2024#GallagherPrem | #BATvNOR pic.twitter.com/zNopRBa879
Bristol’s injury problems
Sale’s win ultimately meant nothing Bristol, Harlequins and Exeter could have done would have got them into the play-offs. Each of those three teams – who finished fifth, sixth and seventh respectively – can reflect on plenty of good moments: Bristol’s six wins in the last seven; Quins reaching the semi-finals in Europe; and Exeter widely praised for their team rebuilding.
Max Malins stepped into fly-half for Bristol after they lost Benhard Janse van Rensburg and soon to depart No 10 Callum Sheedy to injury, and Malins could see more game-time for Bears in that role next season. Bears’ Ellis Genge was another crock with a calf problem, and the prop has a month to recover before England’s opening summer tour match in Japan.
The bottom three
Eighth-placed Leicester’s boss Dan McKellar is expected to bring in former Waratahs and London Irish full-back Peter Hewat as new attack coach, after last year’s appointee Alan Dickens left in mid-season, while Gloucester are concentrating on the European Challenge Cup final against South Africa’s Sharks this Friday, and Newcastle’s aggressive cost-cutting contributed to a sorry 18 leagues losses put of 18 – the first club since London Welsh in 2014-15 to go through a Premiership season without a win.
One more week for the URC
The URC has another week of the regular season to go before their quarter-finals – Munster went top on Friday with yet another impressive away win at Edinburgh, and stayed there after Leinster and Glasgow lost to Ulster, who qualified for the play-offs as a result, and the Lions respectively.
i’s Premiership team of the season (as voted by Hugh Godwin, Louis Dore and Tom Ward):
- 15 Tyrone Green (Harlequins); 14 Immanuel Feyi-Waboso (Exeter Chiefs) 13 Henry Slade (Exeter Chiefs) 12 Benhard Janse van Rensburg (Bristol Bears) 11 Ollie Sleightholme (Northampton Saints); 10 Finn Russell (Bath) 9 Ben Spencer (Bath); 1 Fin Baxter (Harlequins) 2 Curtis Langdon (Northampton Saints) 3 Thomas du Toit (Bath) 4 Maro Itoje (Saracens) 5 Joe Batley (Bristol Bears) 6 Courtney Lawes (Northampton Saints) 7 Guy Pepper (Newcastle Falcons) 8 Jasper Wiese (Leicester Tigers).
Bench:
- 16 Julian Montoya (Leicester Tigers) 17 Beno Obano (Bath) 18 Trevor Davison (Northampton Saints) 19 Alex Coles (Northampton Saints) 20 Ben Curry (Sale Sharks) 21 Alex Mitchell (Northampton Saints) 22 Fin Smith (Northampton Saints) 23 Ollie Lawrence (Bath).
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