News

Venter sounds warning to Saracens

February 08 2010

Saracens rugby director Brendan Venter has warned his players they will not win the Guinness Premiership if they make the kind of mistakes he sat through at Vicarage Road on Sunday.

Despite losing 23-22 to an impressive Newport Gwent Dragons side, the complex regulations of the LV= Cup mean Saracens go through to a semi-final at Northampton on March 14 by virtue of the losing bonus point.

Had they beaten the Dragons, Saracens would have faced Cardiff away on the same day but reaching the last four was Venter's target - although the error count against his team found the former South African centre less than impressed.

"We will not win the Premiership if we play like that and I have told the players it's important that we learn from this experience. If we want to be the best in the league we have to eradicate those mistakes," he said.

"There was no lack of effort out there, it was just that Newport adapted better to the conditions.

"But we knew what we needed which was why Derick Hougaard was brilliant for us at the end. I told him what I wanted him to do when he went on for Glen Jackson, and he did precisely the right thing.

"If we had tried to run the ball at them in that last 10 minutes and turned it over we could have thrown everything away.

"That's when international experience is so valuable, when a player knows the priority on the field and doesn't allow anything to influence him.

"But we did make an awful lot of mistakes after moving into a 6-0 lead early on."

Asked if he was surprised by Newport, Venter added: "Absolutely not. I looked at their line-up and told my players they were in for a tough game."

Saracens scrum-half Neil de Kock said: "We could have handled the end of the game better but we are in the semi-final now and that's what matters. We went out to win the game; we want to win every home game so it was definitely not a case of just playing to edge through by a losing point. If you approach a game with that attitude you invite problems."

A 6,000 crowd voiced their frustration towards the end as Hougaard kept the Dragons pinned back with a succession of long-range missed penalties and three long-range drop goal attempts, all of which went wide.

It was understandable that some supporters felt he was scorning the chance to score some tries, but he was following orders.

Man of the match was Dragons wing Will Harries, who scored two excellent tries, the first a superb solo effort on 15 minutes and the second seven minutes after half-time to keep the Welsh province with their noses in front.

Harries said: "We knew that they kick the ball a lot so we had to be sure we dealt properly with the aerial stuff.

"We played very well in this competition away to Leicester without reward so to come here and win is wonderful for the whole squad. I'm delighted with my tries and what a fine effort we all put in.

"The only shame is that we were not going for the semi-final as well."

Jackson kicked four penalties before being replaced by Hougaard and Chris Wyles scored Saracens' only try when he followed up his own charge down after 54 minutes.

Hougaard did land the conversion for that score, as well as a drop-goal but Newport fly-half Jason Tovey kept the home side under pressure all evening, kicking two penalties, two conversions and a drop-goal.