THERE were no complaints from Glasgow Warriors head coach Dave Rennie after his side were overwhelmed in sunny North London yesterday afternoon by a Saracens team who demonstrated their full European pedigree whilst helping themselves to seven tries through a combination of forward power and disciplined, direct back play.

Warriors battled gamely but struggled to cope with their opponents’ pressure defence. They didn’t help themselves with several careless errors – particularly in their kicking game – which meant they spent far more time hemmed back inside their own half than any team can really cope with against a side of Saracens’ calibre. Stuart Hogg was perhaps the most culpable.

“He’ll be disappointed with his kicking game,” said Rennie. “He kicked three out on the full and missed touch a couple of times from penalties. All those little things … they push you back.

Turning his attention to the overall team performance, the Kiwi coach said: “It is hugely disappointing. We got a hiding from a team that choked us. Their kick-chase game was good, they kicked down our end and they forced a lot of errors.

“From an attack point of view, when we held on to the ball for three or four phases we had them under a fair bit of pressure, but we just didn’t do that enough. In the first half we were just really loose in regard to our kicking game. What they want to do is go from set-piece to set-piece and control the pace of the game, and we allowed them to do that. You can’t put in a performance like that against a side like Saracens and hope to get a result.

“They are a good side and we were under par and they pumped us. That’s what happens at this level. You are a couple of cogs off and you can get embarrassed.”

This was Warriors’ third defeat to Saracens this season, and the most one-sided encounter between the two sides yet, which might be taken as an indication of the work still needing to be done by the Scotstoun outfit if they are to become a genuine force capable of troubling the big teams in Europe when the live ammo starts to fly towards the business end of the season.

Further potential bad news for the Scottish side was the ankle injury picked up by Tim Swinson. The second-row was taken to hospital and no medical update was available last night.

Warriors got off to a flying start when No 8 Matt Fagerson won quick ball at the tail of a line-out and slick hands opened up space for Rory Hughes on the left. The winger made good ground before managing to feed back inside for scrum-half Ali Price to scamper over. There was just one minute and eight seconds on the clock.

Buoyed by this bright beginning, Warriors looked to go again straight from the restart, but Adam Hastings’ feed to Stuart Hogg didn’t go to hand and Alex Goode – who had shifted from full-back to stand-off when star playmaker Owen Farrell called off on the morning of the match because his wife had gone into labour – hoofed the ball downfield to establish the field position from which Saracens squared the contest via Liam Williams.

Alex Lozowski then edged the home team into the lead with a 15th-minute penalty, before a couple of quick-fire tries from David Strettle and captain Brad Barritt pushed the English champions into a commanding 22-7 lead.

It was looking ominous for Warriors, but they managed to slow Saracens’ momentum and give themselves a fighting chance with two Hastings penalties which reduced the gap to nine points at the break.

But within two minutes of the restart, the gap had stretched to 12, with Lozowski kicking his second penalty of the afternoon, and Warriors just could not get a foot-hold. When home full-back Williams ran over the top of prop Oli Kebble for his second and Saracens’ fourth try with just 48 minutes on the clock, any faint hope the visitors had of causing an upset went up in smoke.

Lozowski kept the scoreboard ticking over with his third penalty. Then Strettle intercepted Stafford McDowall’s pass to Niko Matawalu and sprinted it in from halfway to pile on the misery. And Saracens were not done yet, with man-of-the-match Jamie George getting the ball down from a powerful driven line-out.

A breakaway score created by Hogg and finished off by replacement scrum-half George Horne temporarily halted the Saracens procession, but not for long, with Nick Tompkins powering over to take the home team’s tally past the half century mark.

Warriors had the last say, with Fagerson scoring deep into injury time, but it will have come as little consolation on a day when they were comprehensively out-played in almost every facet of the game.

Scorers, Saracens: Try: Williams 2, Strettle 2, Barritt, George, Tompkins. Con: Lozowski 6. Pen: Lozowski 3.

Glasgow Warriors: Tries: Price, G Horne, Fagerson. Con: Hastings 3. Pens: Hastings 2.

Saracens: L Williams (M Mallins 68); S Maitland, A Lozowski, B Barritt, D Strettle (N Tompkins 63); A Goode, B Spencer (T Whiteley 71);R Barrington (T Lamositele 50), J George (T Woolstencroft 72), C Judge (V Koch 50), W Skelton (N Isiekwe 50), G Kruis, M Itoje, J Wray (S Burger 63), B Vunipola.

Glasgow Warriors: S Hogg; K Steyn, S McDowall, S Johnson, R Hughes (N Matawalu 55); A Hastings, A Price (G Horne 59); O Kebble (J Bhatti 67), F Brown (K Bryce 67), Z Fagerson (S Halanukonuka 55), T Swinson (P Horne 68), S Cummings (J Gray 14), R Harley, C Gibbins (C Fusaro 67), M Fagerson.

Referee: N Owens (Wales)