Howley roars in display of Lion class

There could be no greater recommendation, one that confirms Howley's reinvention into his old self following the post-World Cup depression which resulted in his sacking as captain of Wales.

The player whose hollow cheeks have inspired comparison to Stan Laurel had been left in as fine a mess as any endured by his supposed, accident-prone look-a-like.

Howley, his hurt compounded by losing his Wales place after England's blitz at Twickenham last season, almost joined Leicester in a summer move inspired by a belief that the Tigers' stage would rebuild his Lions ambitions. He had been cruelly denied his anointed Test place in South Africa by a shoulder dislocation seven days before the Springbok series began.

'I have some unfinished business to attend to,' he said. 'I haven't got the Test jersey and there is a little tour at the end of the season which it's my dream to make. After what happened last season, I'm out to prove people wrong.

'I have worked very hard on my fitness and skills but I'm under no illusion. I need to get back into the national side otherwise I'm probably outside the top eight scrum halves. One major reason why I chose Leicester was that I thought it would give me a higher profile. People will never realise how close I was to signing for them.'

Family reasons having prevailed, Howley can take stock this morning and realise he is better off for staying at Cardiff. Leicester will probably still make the last eight but their tactical blunders in paying the penalty at Pontypridd suggest no more than a quarter-final place.

But there is a bigger, more disturbing question to be asked.

Where does all this leave the English Premiership, the so-called best club league in the world? The weekend ended with five of the six losing to Welsh, French and Irish opponents. Gloucester, alone among the English clubs, avoided losing and then only courtesy of a penalty try six minutes into injury-time which secured a 22-22 home draw with Colomiers.

Northampton have found the title of European champions such a burden that they are as good as out after three defeats, former winners Bath need to win all three remaining matches to have a hope and the same goes for Wasps, swamped by 92 points through punching far below their weight in Swansea and Paris.

If Saracens are not to end up heading the casualty list of nonqualifiers, they have no option but to win Friday night's return at the Arms Park.

For a start, it would help if they tightened their discipline sufficiently to keep all 15 players on the pitch at all times, an area in which they fell so miserably short on Saturday that they had to endure 30 of the first 42 minutes on Saturday with someone stuck in the sin-bin.

Cardiff, playing as though their lives depended on the result, roughed them up with a hard-nosed brand of professionalism singularly lacking during their painfully timid exit from the same tournament at Llanelli last winter.

Sarries' chief executive Francois Pienaar admitted his players were 'out-foxed and out-thought', none more so than Scott Murray, the most predictable of the five binned for various sins.

'I lost it,' he said. 'They were spoiling very effectively, the ref wasn't blowing them up for it, so we tried to take it into our own hands. I've always been able to keep my temper but I let the boys down.

'We knew they would climb into us but we should have had the nous to play our own game. Instead, we messed up. It won't happen again.'

By the time Sarries finally pulled themselves out of their agitated state and really turned it on near the end, Dan Baugh had done more than anyone to win the match. Like a super-charged lumberjack carving his way through a forest, the Canadian flanker cut them down to size, out-hitting and out-tackling his formidable opposite number, Richard Hill.

'We knew that if we gave them space, they'd be very dangerous,' said Baugh. 'Our plan was to take away that space and not give them time to think. We did it quite well.'

Quite well? They did it perfectly except for the last 10 minutes when a more sympathetic referee would have hit them with a penalty try, but at 32-9 Cardiff were fireproof.

At least their opponents will know what to expect this week when they should have known rather better in the first place.

As captain, Bracken has more to worry about than his return bout with Howley. 'When you see someone getting lamped, it's very difficult not to react,' said the English Lion. 'But we cannot afford to get into that scrap mentality again on Friday night.'