Danny Wilson, Harlequins’ head coach, has taken aim at Saracens by claiming that his club would never disrespect the Investec Champions Cup by naming a second team in a knockout match.
Saracens, who like Quins are chasing a place in the Gallagher Premiership play-offs, travel to Toulon in the last-16 on Saturday and Mark McCall, Saracens’ director of rugby, has said that they would prioritise the league over Europe by resting Test stars.
England players who featured in all five Six Nations matches – such as Saracens’ Maro Itoje, Ben Earl and Tom Willis – are obliged to miss one of the first three matches after the championship. Itoje and Willis played against Harlequins and Leicester in the Premiership so will be forced to miss this weekend’s trip to the Côte d’Azur.
“A lot of the English teams have done this, it’s not just us,” McCall said, as he also opted to rest Earl, Elliot Daly and Jamie George this weekend, the latter two of whom also featured heavily for England in the Six Nations.
Harlequins’ England trio – Fin Baxter, Chandler Cunningham-South and Marcus Smith – are all available this weekend after being controversially rested for the first match back after the Six Nations, when the visitors defied the odds to defeat a fully-loaded Saracens at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
When asked about the approach of his fellow Londoners on Tuesday, Wilson said: “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 part of and [we] want to do ourselves justice.
“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.”
Last year, Wilson selected both Danny Care and Joe Marler in three successive Premiership rounds despite the duo’s Six Nations involvement and then opted to rest them for the Champions Cup quarter-final in Bordeaux – a match that Quins won 42-41. Harlequins’ head coach says he has learnt a lot from how that period in the spring of 2024 was managed.
“Our approach was built on lessons learnt from last year,” Wilson said. “We all know players come out of those international periods emotionally, physically, mentally pretty spent. There’s a lot asked of them. But it’s the emotional side of it that I’ve said a few times before is the one that drains and is probably less recognised.
“So we made a decision no matter who we were playing in that first game back, once they finished the Six Nations, [to say] go on your break, get away, recharge the batteries but recharge emotionally as much as anything. That also allowed us to work with a group of players for a period of time leading into Saracens, work on a game plan to play Saracens and prepare over a long period.”
Comment: I would do the same as Sarries
There is quite a bit to unpack here, but no matter which side of the fence one happens to fall, they are all ultimately in the same garden. The fundamental piece here is that the Champions Cup just does not have the prestige that it once did.
Some 10 or 15 years ago, had McCall and Saracens – or anyone, for that matter – been in this position, no way would they have chosen to rest their stars for a European knockout match. Admittedly, player-welfare guidelines have progressed for the betterment of the sport in the intervening period, but be that as it may, had today’s guidelines existed back then, no way would Saracens have rested their internationals for a trip to Toulon’s galacticos. Back then, the competition was arguably the world’s greatest featuring an oval ball. Now, that prestige and cachet is long gone.
Were I in McCall’s shoes – which all Saracens fans will no doubt be glad to hear I am not – I would have done the same.
Saracens’ spot in the Premiership play-offs is by no means assured and off the back of the Six Nations they hosted Quins in their showcase match in Tottenham followed by a tricky trip to Welford Road to take on Leicester, who were in third at the time. Perhaps, the original plan was to swat Harlequins aside and then rest players to face the Tigers but once that match at Tottenham slipped through their grasp, a loss at Leicester would have virtually ended their season. McCall had no choice.
Maybe the way to avoid this in future is to have a top six play-off system as in France, but that robs Peter to pay Paul. In a league of just 10 teams, the Premiership would then be devalued as Europe’s stock increases.
Many things can be true at the same time. McCall’s approach is understandable (yet regrettable) and Wilson is fair when he says that Saracens are disrespecting the competition. Ultimately, however, it is a competition which has brought disrespect on itself. The task for European rugby administrators is to help it recapture those salad days when such rotation would have been unthinkable.
