{"id":12854,"date":"2025-04-07T04:54:33","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T04:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/investec-champions-cup-northampton-saints-flying-english-flag-in-quarter-finals\/"},"modified":"2025-04-07T04:54:33","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T04:54:33","slug":"investec-champions-cup-northampton-saints-flying-english-flag-in-quarter-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/investec-champions-cup-northampton-saints-flying-english-flag-in-quarter-finals\/","title":{"rendered":"Investec Champions Cup: Northampton Saints flying English flag in quarter-finals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Saints&#8217; victory was as good as it got for the English sides, who collectively conceded 34 tries across their five matches.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Saracens rested England players Maro Itoje, Elliot Daly, Jamie George, Ben Earl and Tom Willis but raced into an early lead in France before being <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/c5yrd7x12n7o\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">overpowered 72-42 by 10-try Toulon<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Harlequins picked their internationals, including England&#8217;s Marcus Smith, but failed to land a shot as they were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/c05np6vvnndo\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">thrashed 62-0 by 10-try Leinster<\/a> at Croke Park. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Leicester Tigers were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/c98gyegjr7qo\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">comfortably beaten 43-19 at Glasgow<\/a> in the final game on Saturday. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Saracens left out their Test stars, in compliance with England&#8217;s player welfare guidelines, after prioritising their pursuit of a Premiership play-off place over a fourth Champions Cup title.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Director of rugby Mark McCall chose to select his England regulars for their Premiership matches against Harlequins and Leicester, forcing his hand in Toulon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Tigers head coach Michael Cheika said &#8220;different teams are affected by different things&#8221;, citing injuries for his side after captain Julian Montoya, Wales back row Tommy Reffell and England lock Ollie Chessum all missed the trip to Scotstoun.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;People are always looking for trends but in reality you have to take each individual game as it is,&#8221; Cheika told BBC Radio Leicester.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Saracens were affected by the laws of having to rest players. We had to rest one and have injuries off the back of the Six Nations, but it comes down to game day. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There were a couple of things that weren&#8217;t good enough and we weren&#8217;t good enough to win.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It did not get much easier for Sale Sharks on Sunday as they travelled to defending champions Toulouse, who trailed at half-time before closing out <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/cn8052xkxx7o\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">a 38-15 win<\/a> in the south of France.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/cr5d3z0mz7ro\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saints&#8217; victory was as good as it got for the English sides, who collectively conceded 34 tries across their five matches. Saracens rested England players Maro Itoje, Elliot Daly, Jamie George, Ben Earl and Tom Willis but raced into an early lead in France before being overpowered 72-42 by 10-try Toulon. Harlequins picked their internationals, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12854"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12856,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12854\/revisions\/12856"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}