Saracens boss Mark McCall praises 'brilliant' comeback display of Billy Vunipola

Comeback | Billy Vunipola had been out for 15 weeks after recovering from knee surgery
Getty Images
Duncan Bech7 January 2018

Mark McCall welcomed the "extraordinary" comeback made by Billy Vunipola as Saracens swept aside Wasps 38-15 in an Aviva Premiership victory at the Ricoh Arena.

Vunipola was a force throughout the 69 minutes he was on the pitch with his ball-carrying contributing to some of the European champions' finest moments in a bonus-point win.

The 25-year-old number eight was making his first appearance for 15 weeks after recovering from knee surgery, his third major operation in 10 months.

In a further NatWest 6 Nations boost for England, Maro Itoje returned from a month out with a fractured jaw and, while less conspicuous than the marauding Vunipola, he came through unscathed.

"Having Billy back makes a difference to any team," Saracens director of rugby McCall said.

"It's extraordinary in some respects to play as well as he did, given that he hasn't played for four months. You could see how motivated he was, the fight that he had. He gets you over the gain-line when others wouldn't sometimes.

"I thought he was brilliant and hopefully that game-time will make him all the better for next week.

"The history with Billy is that he comes back well and comes back with a performance like that, but you just don't know how long it will last because a game is so different from training.

"He hasn't done that many training sessions, but it's not really a surprise. He understands that he needs to bring control to his performance as well as all the aggression he showed on the ball. He had the balance just right here."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in