McCall hails 'great start' for Sarries at new home (From Enfield Independent)

Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall hails his team's 'great start' at Allianz Park after beating Exeter Chiefs 31-11

5:48pm Saturday 16th February 2013 in Sport By Tom Allnutt

Saracens boss Mark McCall hailed his team's "great start" at Allianz Park after the Men in Black recorded a 31-11 victory over Exeter Chiefs in their first Premiership match in their new home.

Sarries were slow to get going but a Charlie Hodgson try before half time and two more from Mako Vunipola as well as another score from Matt Stevens in the second half wrapped up a comfortable bonus-point win.

"It's great to start like that," McCall said.

"It's great to get four tries in our new home - it was a good atmosphere, it was a quick game and certainly our players really enjoyed it."

Sarries were sloppy in the first half, spurning a number of opportunities but turned on the style after the break to take the game away from Exeter.

"For us we were quite frustrated at half time, we felt we had created a lot," McCall said.

"We had some very, very clear cut opportunities it seemed and we blew all of those chances bar one which Charlie [Hodgson] took.

"So 7-3 seemed like a poor reward at half time but thankfully we were patient enough and much more clinical in the second half." 

McCall admits the new surface will take a bit of getting used to and that perhaps his players are sometimes too eager to take advantage of the pitch's free-flowing feel.

He added: "I think the pitch feels good and there's a temptation in certain situations where you might kick but it just feels right to run.

"Our stye is very much doing the right thing at the right time - if it's on in our half we'll go and if it's not on we don't expect our team to go.

"But today we had a lot of ball in hand, we seemed to break them down - we weren't clinical enough in the first half but we were very clinical in the second half."