Castaignÿde rises above the festive mediocrity to thwart Harlequins

There were more dodgy decisions at Vicarage Road than Kimberly Quinn could manage in a lifetime, and as the referee, Ashley Rowden, was responsible for precisely none of them, it was a prime example of two bad teams having an off-day. In the first half, there was barely a kick that was not charged down by some lumbering forward or other; in the second, the simple act of passing the ball in the general direction of a chap's hands rather than behind his earlobe was beyond everyone until Thomas Castaignède materialised in the home side's midfield. Guts and commitment? Plenty of both. Art and craft? Forget it.

Mark Evans, the Harlequins coach, once described drawn matches as "about as satisfying as kissing your sister". On this evidence, he was not wrong. But Evans was far from frustrated at the conclusion of yesterday's game, even though his side had failed to prevail over a team against whom they registered 40 points as recently as last month. Quins may remain in the thick of a relegation dogfight that threatens to be more canine than any of its Premiership predecessors, but they would have been more exposed still had they failed to take something from this exercise in sporting tragi-comedy.

The visitors' laughable performance in the first 40 minutes was epitomised by the Mystery of the Missing Line-out. Ace Tiatia, a strapping Samoan hooker who rather enjoys mixing it with Saracen-clad fellow islanders like the Fijian lock Simon Raiwalui and the Tongan wing Tevita Vaikona, could not find his jumpers for love nor money - no mean feat, given the presence of the All Black second-rower Simon Maling and the former England No 8 Tony Diprose in the catching department.

It turned out that Tiatia had taken a heavy smack to the head in the opening exchanges; so heavy, indeed, that he spent the next half-hour operating under the mistaken impression that he was perfectly fine. "No wonder we couldn't win our own ball," Evans groaned.

As a result, Saracens had more possession than they knew what to do with. They might have scored three tries while Tiatia was lost in a fog of concussion - in Mark Bartholomeusz and Richard Haughton they had the sharpest runners on view - but discovered so many new ways of not crossing the opposition whitewash that they had only a single Glen Jackson penalty to show for their first-half dominance.

"We're a good side until we get within 10 metres of the other team's line, and then we bottle it," said their new coach, Steve Diamond, in a valiant attempt to explain the inexplicable.

Evans withdrew Tiatia shortly before the interval, replacing him with the less experienced but infinitely more accurate James Hayter. In a trice, Maling and Diprose were in business, arming the flawed but occasionally ingenious Jeremy Staunton with a steady supply of ammunition.

The Irish outside-half's attempts to mix up his game were not wholly successful: his distribution was hit-and-miss, his ball retention lamentable and his kicking overcooked. But Staunton asked enough questions of a parsimonious Saracens defence to create the occasional yard of space, and after a long attack featuring a couple of heavyweight thrusts from Ceri Jones and Nick Easter, he bounced a pass towards Gavin Duffy and watched with relief as the wing clung to the ball and slid over in the right corner bang on the hour.

When Staunton dropped a goal eight minutes later to open up a five-point gap at 8-3, he and his colleagues could smell a victory that would have lifted them out of the bottom third of the table. But teams mentally equipped to close out tight games do not generally find themselves at the wrong end of the Premiership, and sure enough, Quins failed to control the closing few minutes as completely as they had the previous 30.

Diamond introduced Moses Rauluni and Kris Chesney off the bench in a successful effort to generate some dynamism, and once Castaignède found himself moving forwards with ball in hand rather than backwards with opposition loose forwards all over his slender frame, he caused mayhem aplenty.

Twice, Castaignède was asked to throw million-dollar passes in the course of an endless Saracens assault on the Quins line; twice, he delivered them to perfection. The second of them found Nick Lloyd in extra-man mode wide on the right, and when the replacement prop found Haughton within a few feet of the line, the equalising try was a formality. Jackson would have won the game for his side had he nailed the conversion, but the ball bounced off the crossbar. All things considered, it was an appropriate conclusion.

Saracens: Try Haughton; Penalty Jackson. Harlequins: Try Duffy; Drop goal Staunton.

Saracens: M Bartholomeusz; R Haughton, K Sorrell, D Harris (T Castaignède 51), T Vaikona; G Jackson, M Williams (M Rauluni 68); K Yates (N Lloyd 45), M Cairns, C Visagie, S Raiwalui (K Chesney 70), I Fullarton, A Sanderson (capt), D Seymour, T Randell.

Harlequins: T Williams (H Barrett 78); G Duffy, D James, M Deane, S Keogh; J Staunton, S So'oialo; M Worsley (J Dawson 18), A Tiatia (J Hayter 40), C Jones, R Winters, S Maling, N Easter, A Vos (capt), A Diprose.

Referee: A Rowden (Berkshire).