Bath’s midfield trio will be handful for Saracens in Twickenham

Bath captain Stuart Hooper has hailed the club's mercurial midfield trio as they put on another masterful display which puts the team one win away from being crowned English champions.

Bath will head to Twickenham to meet Saracens in the Aviva Premiership final next Saturday after England internationals George Ford, Kyle Eastmond and Jonathan Joseph led Leicester another merry dance. The experience of former Ireland scrumhalf Peter Stringer, who scored one of Bath's seven tries, was crucial in setting the club's exciting backs free.

Bath’s 47-10 play-off victory meant Leicester conceded 92 points and 12 tries on two visits to the Recreation Ground this season.

“Those guys see the game quite differently to anyone else I have played the game with,” Hooper said. “The likes of Kyle, George and JJ [Joseph], they see it very differently, and I think that gives them a pretty fresh approach. They see space well, and when they get into that space they are dangerous.

World Cup

Ford and Joseph are established as integral England team members in World Cup year, but while inside centre Eastmond was not involved during this season’s

Six Nations

Championship, he continues to shred opposition defences with remarkable regularity.

“In my opinion, they [Ford, Eastmond and Joseph] are very difficult to play against,” Hooper said. “It depends on how you want to play the game, the structures that England want to play. I am a long, long way from selecting an England team, but if they want to play the way we play the game, then those guys are pretty good at it.”

Saracens expect to enter the final with a fully fit squad, but director of rugby Mark McCall is reluctant to make changes for the Twickenham showpiece. A bug swept through the ranks in the build-up to the 29-24 play-off victory at Northampton, yet still they subdued the reigning champions in a display of trademark belligerence led by flanker Jacques Burger.