Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall praised the ‘nerve’ of stand-in captain Brad Barritt after he passed up a drop goal to chase a try with Sarries trailing London Irish.

Centre Barritt instructed replacement fly-half Charlie Hodgson to kick for touch instead of attempting the drop goal and from the resulting line-out, the Men in Black set up a driving maul from which Billy Vunipola scored the match-winning try.

Trailing 32-29 with a minute left on the clock at the Madejski Stadium, the England international’s decision paid off and speaking to the club’s website afterwards; McCall praised his captain, standing in for Alistair Hargreaves.

He said: “We’ve always had a policy at the club, certainly since I’ve been here, that we leave it the players on the field to make those kind of decisions.

“Brad had the nerve to go for it. Our maul has been a weapon for us so far this season, we’ve worked incredibly hard on it and it was a brilliantly executed play in all fairness.”

Reflecting on his side’s performance overall, McCall paid credit to London Irish, who’s short kicking game caused Sarries problems.

McCall explained: “It was a game that ebbed and flowed a hell of a lot. We were 20 points to seven up at one point but fair play to London Irish they came to the game with a very clever plan of a short kicking game that we didn’t deal with at all well. Three of their four tries came from those kinds of kicks, but we came back.

“We were six points down with only a few minutes to go, like we were in the Wasps game where we had enough in the tank to go and win it. We had a couple of chances to draw the game before we went for it at the end.”