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'Immensely proud' Alex King on the most pleasing aspect of win over Sarries

By PA
PA

Gloucester attack coach Alex King was overjoyed as his side illustrated their huge improvement this season by winning at Saracens for the first time since November 2008 with a deserved 25-24 success.

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Since their last victory at Saracens’ old ground Vicarage Road, Gloucester had lost 12 and drawn the other in 13 visits to their Premiership rivals with the last three meetings seeing the West Country side concede a mammoth 144 points -including a 62-12 defeat.

However tries from Fraser Balmain, Jack Singleton and Lewis Ludlow saw them turn the tide with Adam Hastings adding two penalties and two conversions.

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Saracens outscored their opponents in terms of tries by scoring four through Dom Morris, Rotimi Segun, Theo McFarland and Alex Lewington. Alex Lozowski converted two but also missed a simple conversion – as well as a late touchline effort – which ultimately proved costly.

King, whose side fought back after conceding 14 points without reply and losing two players to the sin-bin midway through the first half, said: “I’m immensely proud of the boys to come here and win for the first time in 14 years.

“Today against of one of the leading sides in the Premiership was a real test for us to show where we are at.

“You’ve got to play smart rugby against a side as efficient as Saracens and our kicking game today was spot-on.

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Alex King
Alex King (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images For Barbarians)

“The most pleasing part of the game was how we managed the sin-bin period. Going down to 13 men could have seen the game go completely away from us.

“Games will smack you in the face at various times but it’s how you respond to that is what matters and today was a really important win for us.”

It means that Gloucester are unbeaten in their last five away games, a feat which they have not achieved since November 2006.

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Despite their defeat, Saracens remain in second place in the Premiership after picking up two bonus points but they could lose ground on unbeaten leaders Leicester, who face Wasps on Sunday.

The bonus points were scant consolation for Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall, who was unhappy with his side’s efforts.

He said: “We are massively disappointed and it pains me to say it but Gloucester had more energy and appetite for the fight.

“They were tremendous today and it’s a club on the up who showed terrific spirit.

“We were off today and our ill-discipline gave them too many opportunities to use their driving line-out, which was a huge weapon for them.

“It’s a big lesson for us today but we’ve now got a week off so we’ll have a think about what happened and hopefully learn from it.”

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J
JW 4 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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LONG READ Does the next Wallabies coach have to be an Australian? Does the next Wallabies coach have to be an Australian?
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