Aviva Premiership final: Saracens' Alex Goode out to prove he is the man for the big occasion yet again

Goode has been on the field for every minute of Saracens’ four previous Premiership finals, and is relishing the prospect of facing Exeter at Twickenham today, he tells Hugh Godwin

Saracen's Alex Goode charges forward (Getty)

No one has been more of a mainstay in Saracens’ epoch-making run of success than Alex Goode. In all of the many big matches played by the ‘Men in Black’ in the last seven years, their full-back has been there at the first whistle and still going at the last. And if the same is not true of England, for whom the counter-claims of Harlequins’ Mike Brown have proved more persuasive, Goode isn’t letting his place on the international periphery get him down. “I don’t think you can be disappointed if your form is good,” said the man voted last week as the Aviva Premiership’s player of the season. “I’m in a good place, confident and happy.”

Exeter Chiefs, who are Saracens’ opponents in the Premiership final at Twickenham this Saturday, have never been at this stage before. By contrast, the 28-year-old Goode has been on the field for every minute of Saracens’ four previous Premiership finals (wins v Leicester and Bath in 2011 and 2015 respectively; losses to Leicester and Northampton in 2010 and 2014), as well as their four losing semi-finals in the Premiership and Europe during the same period, the defeat by Toulon in the final of the European Cup in 2014, and the breakthrough 21-9 win over Racing 92 in this season’s final in Lyon two weeks ago.

“Exeter will be massively up for the final, they’re an intense side anyway, and I don’t think they’ll show any nerves,” said Goode. “But we have been to Twickenham before, we’ve had losses, we’ve had wins and we’re a stronger side for that.” Saracens are also attempting to emulate the league and European double done by Wasps in 2004, and by Leicester in 2001 and 2002. “To fight on two fronts has proved to be very difficult, with the salary cap and squad demands,” said Goode. “To do the double with this group of guys would be very special.”

Goode openly opines that his form has “gone up a level” this season, and the nine-person Premiership judging panel drawn from the rugby media agreed. With Saracens’ pack featuring a bunch of England’s Grand Slammers, and the half-backs Richard Wigglesworth and Owen Farrell nudging and grubbing their tactical kicks, Goode’s signature brand of hot-stepping full-backery – all sidesteps and darting runs and last-minute offloading – has become almost untouchable. He has gradually suppressed the instincts he had as a fly-half earlier in his career, that included a Grand Slam with England’s Under-20s in 2008 and a Junior World Championship final the same year.

Alex Goode won the Premiership Player Of The Season for this term (Getty)

“My first priority now is to take people on and beat players as a strike runner,” Goode said, and it is supported by statistics placing him fifth in the Premiership for metres made, behind Chris Pennell, Mike Haley, Telusa Veainu and Bryce Heem, and 10th for the number of defenders beaten. “I can do the full-back’s tasks of taking high balls and the long kicking game. And I’ve got the added benefit of having a No.10’s background so I can come in and use my passing at first receiver, go on the blind side, and help with the kicking game and the organisation.”

The Premiership trophy will barely have been thrust into the hands of Saracens’ captain Brad Barritt or his Exeter counterpart, the fly-half Gareth Steenson, before Twickenham is cleared in readiness for Sunday’s Test between England and Wales. And that is quickly followed by England, with the Saracens and Exeter players reassimilated, flying to Australia for three Tests against the world’s no.2 ranked team in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney on 11, 18 and 25 June.

Brown, the feisty Harlequin, is one of England head coach Eddie Jones’ three vice-captains, and he started all this year’s Six Nations Grand Slam matches, whereas Goode, while generally in the squad, has made just two competition starts for his country since 2013, and one of those was the dead-rubber World Cup match with Uruguay last October. Will this change next month? Last Sunday at the England team’s hotel it was put to Jones that Goode had “had a particularly strong second half of the season.” The coach’s reply was lukewarm more than laudatory. “You think so?” Jones said. “Well, er, look, he’s played okay. I didn’t think he was great in the European Cup final. I pick the sides on what I need for the team, I don’t pick it on popular demands. There’s always a contest between Alex and Browny, and that’s still the case.” So how had Jones judged Brown in Quins’ less than scintillating run-in to seventh place out of 12 in the Premiership? “Well, he hasn’t been great for Harlequins, but Harlequins weren’t great in the last six weeks of the competition. Let’s just see what he does with us.”

The intriguing dynamic in this debate, which links in with Goode’s ultimate choice of position and the way Jones appears to regard him, is that it was the wily Australian who persuaded Goode to stay at Saracens as a fly-half in that formative year of 2008. “Eddie was coming in to be head coach at Saracens, and they’d signed [Scotland’s] Gordon Ross as a second choice fly-half behind Glen Jackson,” Goode recalled. “I’d had interest from other clubs and was contemplating a move. Eddie called to say I was firmly part of his plans, he spoke to me and my dad and, really, he changed our minds. He’d obviously watched the Six Nations Under-20 games and he was complimentary. England got to the world final in the summer and by that stage I was buzzing to come back into Sarries.”

It all prompts the thought of a ‘Sliding Doors’-style scenario – that if Goode had left and been a regular fly-half at another club, he might have been England’s No.10 at the World Cup instead of his club-mate Owen Farrell, or Bath’s George Ford. “When you’re young you have aspirations to get to the top, and I did want to be the starting fly-half for England,” Goode admitted. “As it turned out, the way we were playing at Sarries, it was more suited for me to go to full-back and stay there. I’ve never had any regrets. I have been privileged to be part of a brilliant club, playing more than 200 games, and I’ve grown as a person and as a player.”

While Jones has said he wants England to emulate Saracens’ “attitude” he also derided the high degree of “structured” play in the recent final against Racing, which featured filthy wet weather. “Maybe that’s just Eddie’s opinion of northern-hemisphere rugby,” said Goode. “He wants people to keep working and keep improving. We’re pretty hot on that ourselves [at Saracens]. That final was more about the territory game and the forwards - Mako Vunipola [the Saracens and England prop] made 23 or 24 tackles, which was unbelievable. When we played Wasps in the semi-final - an unbelievable attacking side on a beautiful day - we played a brilliant match. The same against Northampton. We were playing a Racing side who had bullied and dominated all the teams in front of them. I felt we were composed and accomplished and on top of them.

“Against Leicester [in the Premiership semi-final] last week, it was a nice day for moving the ball and we did that, we were ruthless and put them away. And it’ll be a different game again, this weekend. The strength in our team is the ability to adapt. There isn’t one set way we play, and that is why it can be quite difficult to play against us.”