It was hard not to feel sympathy for Alex Goode during England’s autumn internationals campaign. Not so much for his continued snub – the Saracens full-back is now well accustomed to life in Eddie Jones’s blind spot – but more for his role as guest pundit at Twickenham, inches from the pitch he so desperately still longs to play on.
Hardly surprising however, is that Goode has been cropping up more and more on the punditry circuit, having appeared on both BBC 5 Live and BT Sport of late. For there are few with Goode’s rugby intellect around, not to mention his glittering CV, now 10 years on from his Saracens debut. “I find it quite easy to talk nonsense … to talk about rugby,” he says. “I’ve played the game for a long time and I think about the game quite a bit, so if I can give a few helpful insights into the day-to-day and what people are trying to achieve from what you see on the pitch, then great.”
Exeter look to outmuscle Saracens when Premiership’s top two collide
Most recently he was at Welford Road last Sunday for Leicester’s eighth consecutive defeat – their lowest ebb according to their head coach, Geordan Murphy – and so it is instructive to hear Goode discuss the Tigers’ demise as Saracens’s rise continues. “I saw a few comments on Twitter saying I was like a politician, being diplomatic and trying to find positive things to say about Leicester Tigers,” adds Goode. “I’m going to be positive, and do see positives for Leicester to an extent, but those who don’t see any positives want you to be doom and gloom and throw some grenades. That’s never going to be me. I talk honestly, but with a positive, constructive slant. You don’t have to be outrageous and Piers Morgan-esque to be on TV. People really want an insight, and if you can do that you don’t have to give wild opinions.”
Leicester are England’s most successful club but their dynasty can only be talked of in the past tense. Saracens’s, meanwhile, shows no signs of ending any time soon. They are 22 matches unbeaten – their last defeat was last season’s Champions Cup quarter-final loss to Leinster and they may well be the only English side to reach the knockout stages again this term. Victory away at Exeter on Saturday would considerably reinforce their status as the Premiership’s finest.
It is often asked of Saracens how they maintain their drive for success and Goode is well placed to explain, as one of the few surviving members from the days before Mark McCall arrived. “It’s what everyone tries to do in business and in sport,” he says. “How can you keep at the top, it’s the biggest challenge. I remember hearing from Andrew Strauss five or six years ago, he talked about how when he was England captain their whole goal was to be the No 1 Test team, everything they did was based around that. They got there – and then seven or eight months later they were fifth because they didn’t know what to do once they had got there.
“That is the biggest challenge and we struggled a bit when we won the Premiership in 2011, then had two or three years when we didn’t win. We probably weren’t as hungry but we got things together and understood it. It took the adversity of losing the two finals and the extra-time loss to Northampton [in the Premiership final] to really sting us.”
A couple of weeks ago Saracens found themselves trailing by five points at home to an injury-hit Cardiff Blues side at half-time and responded by chalking up another half-century. McCall said afterwards he was far from happy with his side’s performance despite the scoreline and Goode provides some insight as to why. “We have a great core group here and a coaching group who don’t sit still,” he adds. “We have a humility about us to know that we’re not the best team in the world and we can get better. But we judge ourselves by our own standards and we weren’t happy. It is tough because you have to live it day in, day out but if it was easy everyone would have a dynasty. That’s the challenge because everyone wants a challenge to knock us off the perch.”
We’ve always talked about not having a pick and choose mentality at the club, whether we are at home and expected to win or at Exeter
The same would have been said of Leicester not so long ago and this week the parallels with Manchester United and the Tigers have been in abundance. Goode, a football fanatic who flew to Russia for England’s World Cup semi-final against Croatia, also makes the comparison but does not believe Leicester’s decline is terminal.
“That is always the difficulty when you have had something so good for so long,” says Goode. “Look at Man United now. It is hard when you see a side struggle against average opposition, let alone good teams. Leicester being comfortably beaten by Racing, who were nowhere when Leicester were at the top, is tough for those fans. I said to [Leicester’s] Kyle Eastmond afterwards last week, we lost seven on the bounce around this time last season, and the rest of the Premiership were jumping for joy about that. We had to really galvanise and come closer as a group, and fight so hard. We believed in the process, in the coaches, and came out the other side.”
It is easy to bill Saturday’s trip to Exeter as a clash of the titans. A cursory glance at the Premiership table tells you that these two, by a distance, are setting the pace, even if the Chiefs are no longer unbeaten after their loss at Harlequins. The duo have contested two of the past three Premiership finals and it would a fool who bets against another at the end of the season. “It’s an unbelievably tough place to go and win, a really well coached team, brilliant players but we know when we’re at our best and we will have to be at our best,” says Goode.
“It’s a massive game but we’ve always talked about not having a pick and choose mentality at the club, whether we are at home and expected to win or at Exeter for one of the toughest games of the year, everyone is expected to give 100%, show the effort and intent and work-rate that we expect.”