Match Reaction | Marlie Packer (PWR R8)

Saracens captain Marlie Packer praised the work of her team after a “proper battle” against a spirited Loughborough Lightning side.

After coming away 32-21 victors at the StoneX Stadium, Packer was pleased with the effort shown by the Sarries squad across the 80 minutes.

“It was a proper battle, but there’s now no team in this league that won’t put up a fight, but Loughborough certainly came at us well.

We obviously got those two early tries that put us in a good position, but we let them back into the game in the latter stages of the first half.”

Despite going into the break level, the hosts managed to keep Lightning at bay recording a five-point victory to get their campaign back on track.

“We had trust in ourselves as a team that we could come away with the victory and we proved just that in the second half. We’ve got players among the replacements can give us that real boost and they did just that today.”

One player who did make an impact from the bench was Fancy Bermudez with the Canadian flyer touching down for her first score in a Saracens shirt.

“Fancy was superb when she came on today, she was electric on the wing and deserved a try in the end.”

Looking ahead to next weekend Packer has stressed the importance of regaining their winning streak Saracens held at the start of the season.

“We had moments today where we were firing on all cylinders, we need to continue that momentum over the next couple of matches.

As I said before there are no easy games in this league anymore so if we want to end up in the play-off positions at the end of the season we are going to need to continue to build and get better as a squad.”

Sarries head to Mattioli Woods Welford Road on Saturday to face Leicester Tigers before returning to StoneX Stadium to face Bristol Bears on Saturday 21^st December.