Relegation doesn't diminish the dizzy highs of a decade

Colin Boag continues his series on Super Fans, this week Saracens’ Jason ‘Large’ Harris

- Colin Boag

Every club’s supporters experience highs and lows, but for Saracens’ fans that has been taken to extremes: ten years of the best times, and then recently the worst.

Back in 2009 Jason Harris, known to all as ‘Large’, featured in our original Super Fans series, talking about his beloved Saracens. Asked about their prospects for the coming season he commented that the club had new investors in South African billionaire Johann Rupert’s Remgro, a new head coach in Brendan Venter, and a new chief executive in Edward Griffiths.

To describe the decade since then as eventful would be a massive understatement! Until then Saracens had won only a solitary Tetley’s Bitter Cup, and the Courage League Division 2. Since 2009 they have notched up five Premiership titles and three Champions Cups.

They have also had the most spectacular fall from grace that is imaginable, and will spend next season in the Championship. Supporting Sarries during that period must have been an interesting ride?

“It hasn’t been a roller-coaster, as it has been continually on the up throughout that time,” says Harris. “Brendan and his team had an immediate effect, and we got to the final against Leicester – I called the match for BBC local radio and it was a cracking final even though Sarries lost.

“We got our revenge the following year, when Tigers had that famous nine minutes in our 22 trying to get the winning try – I remember it well as I nearly lost my voice! It was a great time to be a Sarries fan, partly because we’d been so terrible for quite a few years – we’d had a long wait!