Crosstown rivals London Irish and Saracens played out a Christmas classic at Gtech Stadium.
In a fiery contest that boiled over on a number of occasions saw Irish emerge with a long-awaited victory 29 – 20 which was Sarries first loss of the season.
Both sides gave the ball plenty of airtime as they attacked from deep which kept the result in the balance until two minutes to play when Tom Pearson burst through the Sarries defensive line.
As the Irish players rushed forward it was inevitable that a try was incoming, and it would be Chandler Cunningham -Smith who would leap over the line to secure the win.
Played Infront of new England head coach, Irish’s young stars in particular Pearson and Ollie Hassle-Collins were immensely impressive.
Despite all of the positivity around the game, the major talking point will be the two red cards doled out inside the first half an hour of the game.
First up it Irish captain Adam Coleman who saw sent off for the third time in a row in his meetings with Saracens having seen red in both of last season’s fixtures.
Coleman’s hit was particularly ugly as he collided with the head of Tom Woolstencroft who left the game on a stretcher.
The second red was shown to backrow Ben Earle who appeared to be rather unfortunate with his timing who smashed Pearson on the head in a close quarter contact.
Initially the commentators felt there might be enough mitigation to downgrade the incident to a yellow card an opinion that referee Matthew Carley clearly disagreed with.
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