Saracens 'disrespecting' Champions Cup

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Harlequins coach Danny Wilson has taken a swipe at Saracens ahead of this weekend’s round-of-16 Champions Cup playoffs.

Saracens, who have won the elite European competition three times, are resting their England players – Jamie George, Maro Itoje, Tom Willis, Ben Earl and Elliot Daly – for Saturday’s match in Toulon as they prioritise the English Premiership.

"A lot of the English teams have done this, it's not just us," said Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall.

Speaking ahead of their match against Leinster in Dublin on Saturday, Wilson said: "I can't see us ever at Harlequins putting a second team out in a Champions Cup game. That's disrespecting what I think the competition is. It's an exciting competition that we want to be part of and we want to do ourselves justice.

"Having said that, we have to manage our squad, full stop, because the three games that we've had coming out of the break [were] Saracens away, Bath away, Leinster away — we haven't had a home game for three weeks and obviously there was a lot of travel, a lot of challenges, a lot of physical, confrontational games, which means you have to manage your squad."

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"We also know going there as underdogs, as Harlequins, is quite a good place for us in Europe,” he added. “We've certainly done it several times; the history of the club has had some big wins as underdogs. No more so than [against] Bordeaux last year."

Photo: David Fitzgerald/Getty Images

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