Luke beats the boos

Cape Town – Some element of hostility was extremely discernible at times, but if it ruffled Luke Watson then he did anything but show it.

Indeed, the Stormers No 8 took the opportunity in the first serious run-out of the season to offer strong candidacy for player-of-the-match status, should one have been awarded for the friendly against English Premiership outfit Saracens at Newlands on Sunday.

The home side prevailed satisfactorily enough in a lively toss-around, registering six tries to three en route to a 43-33 score-line before a sun-soaked crowd in excess of 25 000.

Jean de Villiers’ team led 24-16 at the break and an encouraging feature of their otherwise understandably ragged -- yet sporadically very thrust-laden -- showing was their ability to strike back and retain “daylight” at times when the tourists appeared to be getting dangerous spurts of second wind.

Sarries stayed keenly in the picture from a scoreboard point of view primarily because Glen Jackson’s placekicking was deadeye stuff, the fly-half achieving seven out of seven with four penalties (clearly they had not made the long haul for pure festival purposes!) and three conversions.
follow the link for the full article
http://www.sport24.co.za/Content/Rug...beats_the_boos