Comebacks, fly-hacks and cornrows - Prem talking points

At the start of pre-season, at their St Albans training ground, Brendan Venter made a speech to his Saracens squad.

"I don't want to be competitive in this league," the returning director of rugby said. "I want to dominate."

Sarries were short of domination - the lead swapped hands four times in the final half hour of a blockbuster - but victory away at Leicester was a fine statement of intent.

Hobbled by an injury to Olly Hartley in the first half and then reduced to 14 men by Nick Isiekwe's 20-minute red card in the second, the visitors nonetheless dug deep and silenced the baying Tigers fans with an extraordinary 40-38 win.

"We've worked a lot more on our mental game, our ability to deal with setbacks, to keep sticking to our process when things don't go our way," Ben Earl, who was initially deployed in the centres in a rejigged backline, told BBC Radio 5 Live afterwards.

"Maybe a different Sarries team from the last couple of years would probably have dropped away in different points in that, but we kept fighting away and finding a way."

Since their return from the Championship, no club has racked up more regular-season Prem points over the last five campaigns than Saracens.

They haven't felt as consistent as that stat suggests though. They narrowly missed out on the play-offs in each of the past two seasons.

本文の著作権はBBCにあります。