Alex Goode hailed the resilience of his Saracens teammates after they dug in to overcome the sin-bin and beat the Cardiff Blues in the Champions Cup. 

Mark McCall’s side have now stretched their unbeaten start to the season to 16 games in all competitions - but they didn’t have things all their own way in the Welsh capital on Saturday. 

The hosts carved out a 14-13 lead at half-time but Saracens responded after the break through the boot of Owen Farrell - who kicked 16-points on the day - to notch a significant 26-14 scalp and put themselves clear at the top of Pool 3. 

When Will Skelton was shown yellow with 15-minutes remaining, however, it looked as if the comeback could be on for the hosts, but Goode was delighted that they managed to grind out the win.

“Any away win in Europe is massive really and it puts us in a great position in the group,” he told Saracens’ website.

“We knew that we weren’t at our best at times but to come through and to show massive resilience down to 14 men in the last 15 minutes was fantastic.

"Credit to us to step up in the second-half but there’ll certainly be things that we won’t be happy with in the first half.

“At the end of the day, to come [to Cardiff] - a tough place to come and get a result - and to fight right until the end is fantastic.”

After Sean Maitland scored an early try to give Sarries the lead, it took until the 77th minute for Mark McCall’s men to seal things when Jamie George went over. 

And despite their remarkable run of results - they are now without defeat since April 1st, 22 games ago - Goode knows that they need to do more if they are to keep the wins coming. 

“We always knew that they were going to raise their game and play well,” he continued. 

“From our point of view, we could’ve helped ourselves more, especially in the first half; we got a great start and then allowed them back into it. 

“It’s a massive thing for us to work on but we’ve got to take our mentality to another level.”