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'It doesn’t look great': Scotland star suffers 'horrendous' injury
By PA
Saracens have described the injury suffered by Scotland international Andy Onyeama-Christie against Harelquins as ‘horrendous’.
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Saracens, who were hit by the serious injury to back-rower Onyeama-Christie early on, were repeatedly repelled by a resolute home side as Quins inflicted a first defeat of the season on their visitors.
Fin Baxter scored the only try of the first half for Harlequins but Hugh Tizard’s score early in the second half levelled the game.
Lennox Anyanwu’s score put Quins back ahead after 52 minutes before Marcus Smith and Alex Lozowski exchanged penalties in the closing stages.
On Onyeama-Christie’s injury, Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall said: “It doesn’t look great, I don’t think.
“I think we’re talking a fracture-dislocation of his ankle, so that’s the big thing today, really, and just so gutted, everybody is.
“He’s had a real tough three years, [with] two broken arms, and for that to happen it’s just horrendous for him, so our thoughts are with him.”
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On the match itself, McCall added: “I think we had a lot of territory in the game, a lot of entries into their 22 and on the day we just weren’t good enough to convert those into anything.
“Credit their defence as well – they defended like their lives depended on it.
“We had five or six line-outs five metres from their goal line and came away with nothing.
“Obviously, it was 7-0 at half-time, but it felt like we had dominated the first half, certainly from a territory point of view. It’s just our attack wasn’t good enough.”
Harlequins head coach Danny Wilson agreed his side’s defence allowed them to end their hoodoo against London rivals Saracens, who were defeated 17-10 at the Twickenham Stoop.
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Quins had lost their previous seven Gallagher Premiership fixtures against Sarries, with their two defeats last season being by scorelines of 38-10 and 52-7.
Wilson said: “As a group, we’ve put defence first more often.
“We’ve started meetings with the defence coach [Jason Gilmore], we’ve started [training] sessions with defence, we’ve talked about defence at the end of sessions as deeply as we talk about attack.
“Quins doesn’t want to lose its attacking identity but if we don’t improve our defence, we have to score five tries every week to give us a chance of winning.
“What we’ve done today is hold Saracens to 10 points, so that gives us a chance – OK, we needed to score two [tries] but it had a Test-match feel about it.
“When three points were available, we were taking the three and that’s why it felt like a Test match, normally we’d go straight to the corner.
“So, we’re really pleased from that point of view, not just defensively right across the pitch, but also their maul because we’d talked a lot about maul defence.”
