Saracens lock Mouritz Botha praised his side’s “brilliant performance” after his man of the match performance in the 23-15 win over the Sharks in atrocious conditions at Allianz Stadium on Saturday.
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The South African-born England second row was at his abrasive best in both attack and defence as the Premiership leaders beat the South African Super Rugby franchise.
“It was a brilliant performance” said Botha.
“It is amazing to play alongside these boys. It was 15 mates playing alongside each other, it’s just great.
On his own performance, which included a massive hit on Springbok flank Jean Deysel, he said, “I love it when big lads just run straight at you, and they had some really big, physical guys playing for them. It was just a great day and I really enjoyed myself out there today.”
Saracens flank Jacques Burger revealed that he was proud of both his own and his side’s physical performance.
“I am as proud of the team’s performance as I was my own. We were brilliant out there today,” said the Namibian.
“We knew that their big guys would be coming around the corner out there pretty hard, and if you let these guys play then they will dominate you.
“So we knew they were going to be pretty physical and get off the line, which meant we had to get in their faces and not give them a second.
“We are really proud of our performance, everyone really stepped up today and we can be happy with how we went out there today.”
On his return to the side, he added, “Being on the sidelines again for a few weeks means that every time I play I savour it, and I treat it if it were my last game of rugby. I just really enjoy playing rugby and to have that opportunity today to battle against a great team was brilliant.”
Saracens Director of Rugby Mark McCall commended his sides competitive spirit.
“There was nothing riding on the result today but we’ve got a very competitive group who want to win things and we saw that competitiveness out there today, especially in the second half. We had to physically front up.
“We’ve had nine very tough games leading up to today, five in the Premiership and four in the European Cup, so it is fair to say that the players maybe deserved a break but we’ve been very excited about this game. We were playing someone a bit different.”
He added: “One of the most pleasing things for me was we have a number of guys who haven’t been playing very much in the last four or five weeks though injury who returned today.
“Jacques Burger came back today, Mouritz Botha played his first full game for two months, Michael Tagicakibau played for the first time in a few weeks, Justin Melck got out there – all these players got valuable game time which is great for the group.”