Saracens ready to snap losing streak – Jim Hamilton

People want to see Saracens lose. Of course they do. They’re the champions of Europe and are there to be shot at, but that won’t even register with them inside the camp as they’ve always been a team that can ignore those external factors and focus on themselves.

Nobody wants to lose seven games in a row, but Saracens will be stronger for coming through this period of adversity and are ready to end the wretched run at Welford Road tomorrow.

It’s the club’s worst run of results for almost 15 years since nine defeats on the spin led to an eighth-place finish in the Premiership in 2003. There’s no danger of this season going the same way and a big win against Leicester will kick start their campaign.

The performances haven’t been at the right level in recent weeks and I know they’ve sat down and spoken about how they’re going to move forward, what it means to be double European champions and how you motivate yourselves to achieve those feats.

I think the big thing for me is that their discipline has been poor and that has been compounded by some poor game management at times that we just aren’t used to seeing from them.

They’ve actually been ahead at half-time in six of the seven games they’ve lost in this bad run and have led a few of those going into the very closing stages. Ordinarily, Saracens are the best frontrunners in the game but they’ve just struggled in that respect lately.

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It’s hard to put your finger on exactly why that has been the case and they’ve failed to see games out but I don’t think it’ll continue to be an issue in the second half of the season.

They’re not scared to say that there’s something wrong and Saracens fix things when they have issues better than any other club in Europe and we saw that in the way they came back from a record European defeat to almost win away at Clermont, which no English team has done for around a decade.

I was in the team that lost 64-23 at home to Wasps the season before last and we went on to win the double, so I’m not worried about it and they won’t be panicking at all.

I know that they’ll be re-evaluating what they’re doing and the coaches will be looking at themselves to see what they could have done differently, as well as analysing the players’ performances.

There is no finger-pointing at Saracens. That just isn’t a part of the culture at the club. The coaches will have looked in depth at what has happened in all of the games and presented the findings to the players in terms of what they think can be improved on.

I’ve never seen a more hard-working group of coaches than those at Saracens at the moment at any other club I’ve been part of or visited. They take it all so personally. It’s not a job to them, it’s their life.

They put their heart and soul into what they do and they will have been even more disappointed than the players with how things have gone in the past couple of months.

Mark McCall’s interview after the home loss to Clermont did shock people as it’s the first time I think any of us have seen him looking like that but he’s regrouped and is still the most sought after coach in Europe at the moment.

He really understands his players and has faith in his leadership and that showed in the ability to turn things around in the space of six days.

I was with him at the airport in Clermont and I said that I think this will stand Saracens in good stead come what may because they’ve been through a tough time and come through it and there’ll be no danger of any complacency setting in later in the season.

This run of defeats began just as the autumn internationals were getting underway and you can’t take away most of the squad and still expect them to win every game.

Admittedly, they’ve not lost seven games in a row in recent years but they do always lose a few games during the international periods if you look back at the results over the past few seasons and they always bounce back.

It’s not really seven defeats in a row either because you can’t count the Anglo Welsh Cup when it’s a complete reserve side with lots of youngsters making their debuts.

And then when you look at the games they’ve lost they are all tough games. They would have expected to beat Exeter at home but they are the champions and then Gloucester and Harlequins are both away trips that ended in defeat last season as well and nobody was talking about a crisis then.

However, if I was Mark McCall and in charge of rediscovering the winning formula, my first priority would be asking the physio how long it’ll be until Billy Vunipola and Maro Itoje are back.

Billy’s injury has been one of the biggest factors for me. He’s one of the best players in the world and would be missed by any club but he really gives Saracens their go forward and they do struggle to play their power game without him.

I’d be going back to the fundamentals that have made Saracens a great club as well, though, making sure the guys are enjoying coming to work and aren’t getting bogged down with external pressures.

I’d be telling them not to panic and reiterating that they might not have won last weekend but they showed that they’re still able to compete with the best sides in Europe, despite missing a host of key players.

If you had to pick a game to play when you’re looking to end this losing run, it definitely wouldn’t be Leicester away when they’ve just suffered a bad loss at home to Munster too. And, it’s on Christmas Eve, which isn’t a great day to be playing away.

However, Mark McCall will be going full noise, has picked his best available side, has Michael Rhodes back from injury and I’m certain they’ll go to Welford Road and win.

The Tigers are going to be hurting as well but if you look at Saracens’ performance against Clermont on Sunday, it was miles better than Leicester’s against Munster the same day. They’ve rediscovered their mojo in defence and if they can replicate that performance, they’ll win for sure.

I think they have to win this one. It could be a real turning point in their season and don’t be surprised if it proves to be exactly that and there’s more silverware being added to the Allianz Park trophy cabinet come May.