Finn Russell swats Six Nations pain aside to inspire Bath as fellow Scotland star gets in on act

Russell played the full match for Scotland against Ireland last Saturday as the Scots’ title and Triple Crown hopes were dashed in Dublin. The 33-year-old returned to club duty on Friday night and was influential as the defending champions were too strong in the Gallagher PREM for Sarries, with fellow Scotland internationalist Josh Bayliss scoring a try.

The win moved Bath back to the top of the table. Henry Arundell helped himself to pair of tries with Will Muir, flanjer Bayliss, Alfie Barbeary, Ben Spencer, Kepu Tuipulotu, Guy Pepper and Bernard van der Linde also crossing. Russell added seven conversions and a penalty for a personal haul of 17 points.

Bath director of rugby Johann van Graan said: “We met on Monday around lunchtime with all the Six Nations players back and it was so nice to have the whole group together again.

“There are many challenges ahead but we needed to make a start. We had one full training session on Tuesday afternoon. From a coaching point of view is that we had banked on what we’ve done in the previous few months.

“Credit to the 23 players that we selected, they represented the group really well. We knew that it would take a few minutes to get accustomed to each other again. I thought we found our rhythm from 10-nil down, and then we managed to score quite a few tries.

“I’m very happy with the overall performance, on both sides of the ball. Defensively we scrambled really well and we had the hunger to attack. I thought we used the opportunities well, but for me it was the attitude of the players, some like Thomas (du Toit) and Santi (Carreras), after five weeks’ holiday, and the international players too.

“Some of them played a Test match on Saturday evening late. And we said in the change room, we got our five points, which we worked very hard for.”

Bath injuries addressed

Van Graan said that skipper Spencer had twisted his shoulder in scoring his try but it was not anything they were really worried about. Replacement prop Francois van Wyck suffered a cut to his leg.

Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall was “hugely disappointed” with the result, especially after starting the game well. He said: “In the last half hour of the game, we looked a bit shell-shocked and got blown away. At the start of the second half, we had a couple of chances down their end and threw an awful offload under their posts. That could have had us back in the game, to be honest, and they went 100 metres and scored. It seemed to knock us massively.

“It was a really poor performance and we’ve got to deliver something better for our supporters and staff next week. They’ve got a really good squad and they were good tonight. But it felt, certainly at the end of the first half, that we put a lot of pressure on ourselves and invited them into our 22 and we know they’re good in there.

“We just got blown away by a good side tonight, but we’re hugely disappointed the way we unravel in that last 30 minutes of the match. In rugby you’ve got to be able to handle the momentum swings that inevitably come and the ups and downs of the games. It feels that when the momentum goes against us we’re not handling it as a group as well as we could.”

“Everyone’s got a responsibility to turn up on Monday and be honest about what happened today and give the week everything that we have.”