Saracens suffer shock 25-17 defeat at Cornish Pirates on Championship debut with side including Lions star Sean Maitland
SARACENS walked the plank as they suffered a shock defeat to the swashbuckling Cornish Pirates.
The three-times European Champions played like absolute trash at Mennaye Field - a ground built on an old Penzance DUMP!
Shipwrecked Sarries boss Mark McCall watched his South African World Cup winning prop Vincent Koch get pumped in the scrum by Pirates' Premiership castaways and local lads Jay Tyack and Dan Frost.
And proud Pirates chief Alan Paver, whose side have played just ONCE in a year, said: "Welcome to the Championship - it is the bad lands.
"If you get it wrong on the day, 23 men will beat you. And that is the beauty of it. You have to come and stand toe to toe with everything and all the stuff that goes on.
"You have to face it all and on any given day - anything can happen. This is an iconic moment. We were the first to really play Sarries at full-tilt and we deserved the win.
"The Championship is a tough place to cut your teeth, people have to respect what the Championship is about. Today showed we can do it and we are valuable to rugby.
"And our scrum has been functioning really well and it had some real fire about it. It was outstanding - it did surprise me with the amount of power we had."
Sarries were without England skipper Owen Farrell and Lions teammates and heroes Maro Itoje, Jamie George, Mako and Billy Vunipola and Elliot Daly.
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All of those should be back in April, after the Six Nations.
But they still had a starting team that included 165 caps thanks to Lions winger and scorer Sean Maitland as well as Scotland's Duncan Taylor.
Maitland fired them in front before Luke Scully hit a penalty and Cornwall lad Tom Duncan scored for Pirates.
Lewington grabbed Sarries' second as they lead 10-8 at the break to a side who had three players part paid-for by Exeter Chiefs star Jack Nowell's neighbouring Swordfish Inn pub.
But hero hooker Frost scored early in the second half, though he was only identified after a request from the stadium PA to put his hands up and make himself known!
Jackson Wray hit back, but fly-half Scully added another penalty before Rhodri Davies' breakaway try sealed the famous win.
Stunned McCall added: “That was a very difficult day. . . a very sobering day.
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"But we have got a proud group of players in that changing room who have been through a lot together and are united. Clearly we have to bounce back and bounce back quickly.
"We play Jersey at home next. There are nine games left for us in this competition and we have to accumulate as many points as we can.
“We have to find answers. We have already played five friendly games in this competition and struggled in a couple of those games as well. We have to get a lot better."