Successful Saracens must stay hungry - Mark McCall

Omnisports

May 27, 2016 11:01 PM

Mark McCall says Saracens "have to stay hungry and stay motivated" after rounding off a magnificent season by retaining the Premiership.

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Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall has urged his side to "keep pushing ourselves on" after they completed a domestic and European double with victory over Exeter Chiefs in Saturday's Premiership final.

Two weeks on from securing the European Champions Cup for the first time, Saracens held off a determined fightback from the Chiefs – who trailed by 20 points in the first half – to run out 28-20 winners at Twickenham.

McCall's men have now claimed successive Premiership titles and are the first club since Wasps in 2004 to triumph in England's domestic league and Europe's premier club competition.

With key men such as Owen Farrell (24), Billy Vunipola (23) and Maro Itoje (21) still under the age of 25, Saracens would appear to have room for improvement, despite their recent success.

McCall was quoted by the Premiership's official website as saying: "The age profile of the team is good, everyone's signed up for the next two or three seasons.

"But the Premiership is getting stronger and stronger, Exeter will come back harder, so we have to stay hungry and stay motivated and keep pushing ourselves on.

"We all remember what it felt like losing two finals in a row two years ago, the last one here in the last second of extra time [a 24-20 loss to Northampton Saints] was painful, the hardest it gets, but to have the two seasons we've just had, winning it last season and [reaching the] Champions Cup semi-final and going one better this year is special."

Exeter coach Rob Baxter believes his side will have learned much from their first experience of a Premiership final.

"That first 40 minutes cost the game, but I don't think we could have really done much beforehand to change all that," said Baxter.

"We needed that first 30 minutes of the final, we needed to learn what that felt like and the experiences of it to the players.

"A lot of teams take up needing the whole game to learn, but we ended the first half pretty well and that gave us great confidence for what we wanted to do and we got better as the game went on."

Omnisports

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