Publications
Partners
London - Brendan Venter believes his table-topping Saracens side are becoming addicted to winning.
Sunday's 22-6 win over Wasps made it eight English Premiership victories out of eight so far this season and left Venter's men six points clear at the top of the table.
While the former Springbok centre accepts Sarries' bubble will burst at some point, he is relishing the form of a team who in midweek beat world champions South Africa at Wembley.
"We played really well. After the excitement of beating South Africa at Wembley on Tuesday they still managed to produce that performance on a bitterly cold day," Venter said.
"Winning is becoming a bit of a drug. We won't win every game, that's the nature of rugby. But we are very difficult to beat and our lineout and scrum were magnificent.
"Someone asked Tiger Woods his motivation and he replied that he hated losing. The same question was put to Roger Federer and he said it was his love of winning. I want us to be like Federer.
"We have a tremendous team spirit and I am very proud of them."
Wasps head coach Tony Hanks added: "No excuses. We were not accurate enough on the day, which was a bad day at the office.
"It's all very well talking about who is missing on Test duty, but we had people out and so did they."
Former Springbok Derick Hougaard kicked 17 points as Saracens bested Wasps in the scrum and fellow South African Schalk Brits scored the game's only try in the 12th minute following a powerful driving maul.
Dave Walder kicked two penalties for Wasps.
In the day's other Premiership matches, Sale overturned a 14-3 half-time deficit to beat bottom of the table Leeds 24-17.
Converted tries from Lee Blackett and Scott Barrow gave Leeds the edge before tries from ex-England wing Ben Cohen and Richard Wigglesworth brought Sale back into the game.
Replacement Carl Fearns notched the clinching score six minutes from time.
"Just after the restart we looked like we were going to go down but full credit to the players, they had the belief," said Sale boss Kingsley Jones.
Leeds coach Neil Back, a member of England's 2003 World Cup-winning team, said defeat was tough to take for his team.
"It's a bitter pill to swallow and I feel for the players."
Elsewhere, London Irish, last season's Premiership finalists, lost 15-11 at home to Newcastle with Jimmy Gopperth scoring all of the visitors' points courtesy of five penalties.
Irish's Tongan No 8 Chris Hala'ufia scored the only try of a poor match but that, and a bonus point, was of little consolation to head coach Toby Booth.
"I'm not best pleased, for obvious reasons. I'm disappointed by the nature of it (the defeat) - it was pretty disappointing," said Booth.
"The first 15 minutes of the second half were excellent, but it's taken us 40 minutes to get there - and that's not acceptable."
For Newcastle this was some consolation after they were thrashed 48-8 by London Irish in January and victory represented their first win in nearly four years over the Exiles.
"I'm really pleased for the boys, they worked hard this week on a specific game-plan and that's worked for us," said Newcastle coach Steve Bates.
