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Quins maul beleaguered Saints, Sarries up to second

Harlequins celebrate Danny Care’s first try

Danny Care and Tim Visser claimed doubles as Harlequins inflicted a 50-21 drubbing on beleaguered Northampton Saints at Twickenham and Saracens made it back-to-back Premiership wins at the expense of Worcester Warriors on Saturday.

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Saints this week installed Alan Gaffney as interim director of rugby until the end of the season and the Australian watched his side slump to a 12th defeat in 13 games after a pitiful first-half showing in front of a crowd of 77,825.

Sarries hammered Saints 55-24 on the opening day of the season and the Northampton club suffered another mauling in their final game of 2017, rampant Quins taking advantage of meek defending to score seven tries.

Captain Dave Ward’s try put Quins in front 10 minutes in and Charlie Walker added a second after an excellent chip and chase from lively teenage fly-half Marcus Smith.

Visser and Care added further tries to secure the bonus point, Saints looking shell-shocked as they went into the break trailing 31-0 after being torn apart all too easily.

The excellent Smith tossed a long pass for Visser to add another five-pointer early in the second half and England scrum-half Care touched down again after Rob Horne and Nic Groom went over in quick succession, Saints finally showing some spirit in a lost cause.

Mikey Haywood scored a third Northampton try after Mat Luamanu went over at the other end, while Smith finished with 15 points with England head coach Eddie Jones in the stands to witness another difficult day for his captain Dylan Hartley.

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Second-bottom Worcester were unable to pull off a shock victory which would have moved them above Northampton as Sarries sealed a six-try 46-31 at Allianz Park.

Jackson Wray and Nathan Earle scored two tries apiece in the second half for the European champions, who followed up a Christmas Eve success over Leicester Tigers – which ended a seven-match losing streak – with another win.

Owen Farrell scored 16 points from the tee as Sarries moved above Wasps into second spot, five points behind leaders Exeter Chiefs – who play Leicester on New Year’s Eve.

Gloucester occupy fourth spot following a 20-16 home win over Sale Sharks, while Alex Tait helped himself to a brace of tries in Newcastle Falcons’ 20-15 victory at bottom side London Irish.

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J
JW 32 minutes ago
'Passionate reunion of France and New Zealand shows Fabien Galthie is wrong to rest his stars'

Where? I remember saying "unders"? The LNR was formed by the FFR, if I said that in a way that meant the 'pro' side of the game didn't have an equal representation/say as the 'amateur' side (FFR remit) that was not my intent.


But also, as it is the governing body, it also has more responsibility. As long as WR looks at FFR as the running body for rugby in France, that 'power' will remain. If the LNR refuses to govern their clubs use of players to enable a request by FFR (from WR) to ensure it's players are able to compete in International rugby takes place they will simply remove their participation. If the players complain to the France's body, either of their health and safety concerns (through playing too many 'minutes' etc) or that they are not allowed to be part in matches of national interest, my understanding is action can be taken against the LNR like it could be any other body/business. I see where you're coming from now re EPCR and the shake up they gave it, yes, that wasn't meant to be a separate statement to say that FFR can threaten them with EPCR expulsion by itself, simply that it would be a strong repercussion for those teams to be removed (no one would want them after the above).


You keep bringing up these other things I cannot understand why. Again, do you think if the LNR were not acting responsibly they would be able to get away with whatever they want (the attitude of these posters saying "they pay the players")? You may deem what theyre doing currently as being irresponsible but most do not. Countries like New Zealand have not even complained about it because they've never had it different, never got things like windfall TV contracts from France, so they can't complain because theyre not missing out on anything. Sure, if the French kept doing things like withholding million dollar game payments, or causing millions of dollars of devaluation in rights, they these things I'm outlining would be taking place. That's not the case currently however, no one here really cares what the French do. It's upto them to sort themselves out if they're not happy. Now, that said, if they did make it obvious to World Rugby that they were never going to send the French side away (like they possibly did stating their intent to exclude 20 targeted players) in July, well then they would simply be given XV fixtures against tier 2 sides during that window and the FFR would need to do things like the 50/50 revenue split to get big teams visiting in Nov.

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