Harvey gets Irish home

When Eileen Drewery has finished with Kyran Bracken, she may find herself fielding requests to slip on a Saracens jersey for a game or two.

On-field healing hands would have come in very useful yesterday in a contest which sometimes resembled a low-grade juggling exhibition and was stolen from the home side's confident grasp by a 78th-minute try from the visitors' lock, Nick Harvey.

If Irish, in their first league outing since swallowing up Richmond and London Scottish, expected to beat the premiership favourites on the opening weekend, the sight of debutante forward Mark Gabey thundering down the right touchline to put Harvey clear was an unlikely option entering the last 10 minutes.

Watching his boys, twice reduced to 14 men, scramble back from 23-21 down improved Dick Best's humour no end.

"Wonders will never cease," grinned Best. "With 10 minutes to go I thought we were going to need something pretty exceptional, but their fitness came through and they played quite well at the end."

Even so the result owed a little to the generosity of the newly-arrived Mark Mapletoft, who scored a spectacular 60-metre try but missed four penalty attempts, three of them sitters. Saracens' motorised tee-carrier embarrassingly ran out of juice in the second half and the home side followed suit.

"The fact of the matter is we lost it," admitted Francois Pienaar. "It is a blow, because you don't want to start the season like that. We had enough opportunities to win the game but we didn't take them."

Even without eight World Cup personnel and the injured Jeremy Thomson, they would have expected more. A training camp in Biarritz was followed by a pre-season 42-7 thumping of Bath at the Rec, and when all their new arrivals are in harness, they will take some stopping.

However, until the excellent Jake Boer departed with hamstring trouble after his umpteenth cover tackle of the first half, Irish appeared to have most bases covered. Jarrod Cunningham is an outstanding broken-field runner and the New Zealander's sweet angle following good close work by his forwards yielded the first try after 20 minutes.

A Mapletoft penalty followed by a penalty try for obstructing a quick tap near the line cut Irish's half-time lead to 15-13, and, despite his kicking fallibility, the former Gloucester man showed good pace coming into the line to split the Irish defence.

Two Cunningham penalties dragged Irish back to 23-21 down, only for Rob Hunter's sin-binning for a spear-tackle to slash the odds on a home win.

Irish, though, are not easy to pigeon-hole. They have altered their colours so often a change to London Chameleons might be an option, and the new jerseys, bottle green with a nod to both Richmond and London Scottish in the badges on the sleeves - "I feel like a boy scout," quipped Best. Irish representation was restricted to the two wings, with Italian centre Marco Rivaro and Gabey, from Queensland via Bristol, stretching the nationality net even wider.

Brent Cockbain, brother of the Wallaby Matt, arrives this week, yet another interesting one for Bracken and England.

Saracens: Mapletoft; Thirlby, Constable (Johnston 70), Sorrell, O'Mahony; Lacroix, Walshe; Flatman, Chuter, White, Davison, Chesney, Cole (Ogilvie 62), Pienaar (capt), Diprose.

London Irish: Cunningham; Campbell, Rivaro (Hoadley 58), Whetstone, Woods; Brown, Putt; Hatley, Kirke, Fullman, Strudwick (capt), Harvey, Boer (Gabey 37), Mower (Hunter 66), Gallacher.

Referee: B Campsall (Yorkshire).

The young Lansdowne fullback Gordon Darcy has been drafted into Ireland's squad for the Rugby World Cup. Darcy takes the place of the injured Girvan Dempsey and will join up with the squad this week as they prepare for their final warm-up game against Ulster.