Saracens wouldn’t be the most loved of English sides, what with their South African ownership, large scale recruitment from South Africa and a crash-bang-wallop, kick-chase game built around an ultra physical defence. In any event, London Irish’s Brian Smith evidently isn’t a fan.

Explaining his disinclination to emulate Saracens prior to Saturday’s meeting, Smith said: “I was asked the question are we trying to be Saracens and I said ‘No we’re not,’ We’re an English club; 80-90% of our English. We have an Irish flavour, so we’ve got nothing in common with Saracens.”

“Our philosophy on how to play, our team colours, where we recruit our players from,” he added, citing further differences. “We’re an English league team that’s proud of our heritage and proud of the way we play. We’ve got a saying, ‘good over evil’, so we think ball in hand can beat a good kick-chase game. Obviously you’ve got to be patient because they’ve got a very good defence. Ultimately, we want to be successful, but we want to be successful playing our sort of rugby.”

Hmmm. Mark McCall (above), his team talk provided for him perhaps, watched his ugly Sarries beat beautiful Irish 40-3.