Opposition view: McCall salutes Saracens for showing composure at Saints

Mark McCall saluted his Saracens side for their composure after David Strettle's late brace secured a 38-27 Gallagher Premiership victory at Saints.
Liam Williams helped to set up the Saracens victory (picture: Kirsty Edmonds)Liam Williams helped to set up the Saracens victory (picture: Kirsty Edmonds)
Liam Williams helped to set up the Saracens victory (picture: Kirsty Edmonds)

Wing Strettle scored twice in as many minutes late on to seal a bonus-point success, while Alex Lewington also scored a couple of tries in the first period.

Ben Spencer dived over for Saracens, too, as they defied yellow cards in either half, for England stars Jamie George and Billy Vunipola.

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Saints' tries came from Piers Francis, Dylan Hartley and Ben Franks, but it was not enough.

And Saracens boss McCall said: "We are absolutely thrilled to win and to get five points. It was a game we won three or four times.

"Our defensive maul was really poor and we gave away a couple of penalties on the halfway line which resulted in Northampton putting us under a lot of pressure.

"Other than that I thought we were very dominant and the rest of our game was in really good order.

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"We attacked well, we got over the gain line, and won the majority of the collisions."

Strettle's late salvo ensured Saracens came out on top and the veteran winger earned special praise from McCall.

"Dave is a beautiful athlete," he added. "If you wanted to be a runner, that's the way you want to run. Alex scored two more tries and it's good for us that our wingers are scoring.

"A lot of people played well, but what is most pleasing is having got into a position when we were two points up with 10 minutes to go, a lot of teams would have panicked in that situation.

"We were very composed and showed a lot of our experience."