By Charlie Elliott
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Saracens head to Toulon in the round of 16 of the Champions Cup, with most of the noise surrounding the game regarding off the field matters as opposed to the game itself.
Sarries head coach Mark McCall admitted that the competition was not a priority for his side, instead opting to focus solely on the race for the top four in the Premiership.
While this isn’t a new thing, it is slightly bizarre for a coach to be so open about his lack of care about the top competition in Europe.
Here is an in-depth look at why they decided to do it, the reaction of other teams and recent examples of when else it has happened.
Prioritising Premiership
The main reason that Mark McCall has given for not taking the Champions Cup as seriously has been that he wants to prioritise the Premiership, given that they are currently only two points from the top four.
Following the Six Nations, Maro Itoje and Tom Willis are yet to complete their mandatory rest, so they are required to miss this game.
Mandatory rest requires those who featured heavily in the Six Nations to miss one of the first three games post-Championship, with this marking the third for Saracens.
Meanwhile other England players Jamie George, Elliot Daly and Ben Earl are simply set to be rested.
Earl was the only one out of the five who didn’t start in last week’s 29-22 win away at Leicester Tigers.
If Sarries were to win this game, they would likely have to face reigning Champions Cup winners Toulouse, assuming they beat Sale Sharks.
It would be out of the pan and into the fire, and the probability of beating two out of the top three Top 14 teams is very slim.
Other instances of this happening
This isn’t the first, nor will it be the last time that this is going to happen, especially with South African teams included in the tournament, and they travel they contend with.
In the 2024/25 Champions Cup pool stage, the DHL Stormers’ decision not to field their strongest team against Harlequins raised questions about their strategy and priorities.
With the group stage games often seen as opportunities to rotate players and manage workloads, the Stormers opted to rest key players due to the travel required and the toll that bringing a full-strength side would have had on them.
Quins dominated them and ended up winners by a 53-16 scoreline, which raised questions about the competition given that teams were willing to be on the end of a battering.
Similarly, in the 2023/24 Champions Cup quarter-final against Northampton Saints, the Vodacom Bulls also made the controversial decision not to field their strongest available team.
Backs Willie le Roux, Kurt-Lee Arendse, and Canan Moodie were amongst the 13 changes that they made for this game.
Despite the high stakes of a knockout game, the Bulls opted for rotation and cited travel disruption as their reasoning.
It resulted in a one-sided affair that Saints won 59-22, which didn’t do justice to what should have been a great occasion, being the Bulls’ first ever Champions Cup quarter final.
Danny Wilson and Joe Marler’s reaction
Harlequins head coach Danny Wilson has slammed McCall’s decision as “Disrespecting what I think the competition is.”
His full quote was: “I can’t see us ever at Harlequins putting a second team out in a Champions Cup game.
“That’s disrespecting what I think the competition is. It’s an exciting competition that we want to be a part of and want to do ourselves justice.”
He did empathise with McCall, and later said: “Having said that, we have to manage our squad, full stop, because the three games that we’ve had coming out of the break (were) Saracens away, Bath away, Leinster away – we haven’t had a home game for three weeks and obviously (there was) a lot of travel, a lot of challenges, a lot of physical, confrontational games, which means you have to manage your squad.”
Former Harlequins player Joe Marler responded to Wilson’s claims with a post on X that simply said: “The irony”.
This likely makes reference to the fact that just a couple of weeks ago, Quins did not play their internationals in a big match against Sarries.
It may also reference the 2020 campaign in which Harlequins lost 49-7 at home to Racing 92 in the Champions Cup pool stage, after putting out a weakened squad.
Paul Gustard was the head coach for this, not Wilson, so this game may not have been the one referenced.
Or possibly it refers to the supposed lack of integrity that Quins have in the competition, following the ‘Bloodgate’ scandal, although this is a bit more of a tenuous link.
Whatever Marler meant, he seems to believe that Wilson and Harlequins don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to criticising McCall’s decision.
READ MORE: Champions Cup Round of 16 – Best head-to-head matchups
