Clermont catch poor Saracens between a Brock and a hard place There were two striking features in the run-up to kick-off, one of them surprising, the other rather less so. To take the unusual aspect first, it was satisfying - perhaps even a little spine-tingling - to see Vicarage Road, a very English kind of run-down sporting dump, with its half-pound deathburgers and boarded-up public lavatories - transformed into a vibrantly colourful, wonderfully noisy corner of the French rugby landscape. More than 2,000 supporters travelled from the Auvergne and the racket they kicked up suggested there were five times that number in the ground. As for the other aspect, this took the form of an entirely predictable blart from the Saracens chairman, Nigel Wray, about the iniquities and inequalities of the Heineken Cup. "It's a great tournament, but the structure is completely wrong," he said, breathing fresh life into the age-old arguments about qualification and funding. Wray pointed out, not unreasonably, that the Irish provinces, Welsh regions, big-city Scottish teams and Italian super-clubs can shape their seasons around Europe because of the way the RaboDirect Pro12, their four-country "domestic" tournament, is set up, and therefore have a significant advantage over the English and French contingent. He also laid into the restrictions imposed on the better-heeled Premiership sides, of which Saracens are patently one, by English club rugby's salary cap. He had a point there, too: as Clermont turned up with five French internationals, a stellar All Black and a Lions Test player - and that was only the back division - it is safe to suggest that they spend rather more than £4.4m a year on wages. But the ever-generous benefactor could have picked a better moment to unburden himself. The back end of a season in which Premiership clubs filled only four of the 16 quarter-final places in the two European competitions is hardly the optimum time to call for a 25 per cent hike in red-rose representation. Clermont, champions of France in 2010 and beaten semi-finalists a year ago, lost one of those high-calibre backs, the fly-half David Skrela, inside three minutes. The goalkicker's left leg gave way during the opening attack, launched from deep by the inventive Alex Goode, and he was forced to give way to Brock James, who proceeded to land three penalties in the twinkle of an eye. "Who was the idiot responsible for doing Skrela a mischief?" muttered one member of the Saracens management, with considerable feeling. This same James had suffered a very public and horribly personal meltdown at the last-eight stage of the 2009-10 tournament: indeed, his frailties were entirely responsible for a one-point defeat by Leinster in Dublin. Here, he looked as though he could not miss: until, that is, he missed - from a difficult position in right field, 40-plus metres from the sticks. He would miss again before the first half was out, this time from the best part of 60m. If quarter-final points were going adrift for the second time in three years, only a very harsh critic indeed would have accused him of falling apart again. Saracens, restricted to a single Owen Farrell penalty in the first period, had plenty of food for thought at the interval, not all of it provided by their opponents' second-string No 10. The English champions had suffered a fearful pummelling at the scrum and while they had fought back well at a couple of late set pieces, there was no guarantee that the formidable Georgian prop Davit Zirakashvili, a dead ringer for one of the Boulder Brothers in the old cartoon show Wacky Races, would not find his second wind. Three minutes after the restart, the home side had so much to think about, their collective brain was on the point of exploding. Three Clermont tight forwards -the prop Lionel Faure, the hooker Benjamin Kayser and the lock Nathan Hines - made big ground to create a little elbow room for their magnificent captain, Aurélien Rougerie. The outsized centre set sail towards the Saracens line before offloading to Morgan Parra, out of Chris Wyles' tackle. Parra could have dummied Goode and scored; instead he flicked the ball to Lee Byrne, who finished in the right corner. Byrne's maiden aunt would have done likewise, such was the time and space available. Inevitably, James added the wide-angled extras, and when he dropped a goal from the back end of beyond five minutes later, Saracens were 16 points adrift. For every spark of attacking intelligence from Goode - and there were enough of those to guarantee the full-back a trip to South Africa with England this summer - the beaten forwards committed an indiscretion under pressure. When a driving Clermont maul hit the deck midway through the third quarter, James dispensed more hurt with another three-pointer. The contest was never less than hard, but it was always less then close. With Farrell hobbling off, his fellow centre, Brad Barritt, tackling himself into oblivion and the young flanker Will Fraser disappearing into la-la land, Saracens ended up with a wing in midfield and a hooker in the back row. They were, to put it mildly, all over the place - and as a symbol of England's current fortunes in world rugby's most captivating annual jamboree, it could not possibly have been bettered. Saracens: Penalty Farrell. Clermont Auvergne: Try Byrne; Conversion James; Penalties James 4;Drop goal James. Saracens: A Goode; D Strettle, O Farrell (J Short, 54), B Barritt (A Powell, 66), C Wyles; C Hodgson, R Wigglesworth (N de Kock, 54); R Gill (M Vunipola, 64), S Brits, M Stevens (C Nieto, 68), S Borthwick (capt), M Botha (G Kruis, 54), J Melck (J Wray, 50), W Fraser (J George, 66), E Joubert. Clermont Auvergne: L Byrne; S Sivivatu, A Rougerie (capt), W Fofana, J Malzieu; D Skrela (B James, 3), M Parra (L Radoslavjevic, 76); L Faure (V Debaty, 49), B Kayser (T Paulo, 58), D Zirakashvili (D Kotze, 56), J Cudmore (J Pierre, 54), N Hines, J Bonnaire, A Lapandry, E Vermeulen (J Bardy, 54). Referee: A Rolland (Ireland).