A first-half Chris Ashton double helped Saracens to a 22-12 win over Harlequins in front of 80,650 spectators in the show piece London derby at Wembley.
The result cements Saracens’ place at the top of the Aviva Premiership, but leaves Harlequins trailing in their quest for a top-four finish.
The Wembley clash between London’s two city clubs has become an annual fixture in recent seasons, with last year’s match drawing a crowd of 84,068; a world record for club rugby.
Quins have now not won at Wembley since 2012 and victory all but assures Sarries a home semi-final.
And while Ashton’s double took the headlines, it was full-back Alex Goode who impressed Mark McCall most of all.
“Over the last couple of seasons he (Goode) has played as well as anybody in England in that position. He’s been phenomenal for us all season,” he said.
“The clubs deserve a lot of credit, a lot of people work hard to make this game (at Wembley) happen. We’d like to have given them something better in the second half.
“But we’ve won four games in a row, two of those against Exeter and Bath were outstanding performances, last week and this week have been a little bit below the standards that we would expect.”
Three penalties from Ben Botica kept Quins in the contest in the first half but Sarries had three tries by the break.
The ‘home’ side looked keen to avenge their narrow loss at The Stoop in January, and scored the first try in the fourteenth minute.
A smart off-load from full-back Goode, at the end of a fluent passing move, released Ashton to score the easiest of tries which went unconverted.
Their second came when lock George Kruis pinched the ball off the Harlequins skipper Danny Care a few metres from the line and bundled over.
And they put some clear daylight on the scoreboard just a few minutes before the break, a sensational run and one handed off-load from forward Schalk Brits set up Ashton for his second score of the game, completed with a trademark swan dive under the posts.
Another Botica penalty in the second half got Harlequins off to a positive start and pulled them to within a score of Saracens.
But as the second half wore on McCall’s side turned the screw, although they did not secure victory until replacement Owen Farrell’s penalty in the last ten minutes.
Botica missed a late penalty of his own that would have given Quins a losing bonus point but it drifted wide to leave Conor O’Shea’s men out of the running for the top four.
“In the league we have to look to try and win our final two games and get in the top six,” said the director of rugby.
“Your goals do change, that’s sport. They’ll be disappointed but we’ll move on.
“It’s an unforgiving league at the best of times; we had a tough Six Nations window and we haven’t been able to get it back in time.
“That was two good sides out there. It was tough, it was physical. But the momentum moments in that match went their way today.
“That’s the margins at the top level. The fellas are bitterly disappointed because our aim was top four, but now our goals will have to change very quickly. We’ll have to nail our two league games but we also want to get to a final in Lyon and that means beating Grenoble.”
Saracens: Goode; Ashton, Bosch, Taylor, Wyles (Tompkins 77); Hodgson (Farrell 55), De Kock (Wrigglesworth 53); M Vunipola (Saunders 49), Brits (Barrington 49), Du Plessis (Lamositele 49), Hamilton (Smith 56), Kruis, Rhodes, Wray, B Vunipola (Vunisa 75)
Not used: Smith,
Harlequins: Brown; Yarde, Marchant, Roberts, Visser (Chisholm 17); Botica, Care (Dickson 72); Lambert (Evans 69), Gray (Ward 62), Collier (Sinckler 62), Twomey, Matthews, Robshaw, Clifford (Luamanu 60), Easter
Not used: Merrick, Hopper
Scorers
Saracens
Tries: Ashton 2, Kruis
Conversions: Hodgson 2
Penalties: Farrell
Harlequins
Tries:
Conversions:
Penalties: Botica 4
Referee: Greg Garner
Attendance: 80,650