It was the culmination of 12 months of hard work for the Men in Black, having lost last year’s final to a late Dan Hipkiss try.
History threatened to repeat itself with just a minute and a half left on the clock, as Leicester set up camp in the Saracens 22 and began to batter away at the line.
For over 30 phases the Saracens line held firm and when their dogged defence eventually drew a indiscretion from Leicester, Owen Farrell kicked the resulting penalty into touch to cue wild celebrations from the Saracens players, staff and supporters.
It was just reward for Saracens, who scored the only try of the match through 21 year old wing James Short and had the more accurate kicker in 19 year old fly half Owen Farrell.
Saracens threatened early on and their break after six minutes saw Ben Youngs end up in the sin bin for putting his hands in the ruck in an effort to stop the quick ball Saracens needed. Without Youngs Leicester wobbled and a nasty moment in their in-goal area looked like it may lead to the first try of the match.
Instead, Flood and Farrell traded penalties to put the match all square at 6-6 before Short’s intervention on 28 minutes cleverly grounding the ball in the corner, a try which was confirmed by the Television Match Official.
Farrell converted and scored another penalty to put Saracens 6-16 up, before Flood claimed his third penalty to send the teams in 9-16 at the break.
A compelling second half was won 9-6 by Leicester Tigers reducing the gap to just four points going into those final nerve wracking moments. But the league’s best defence held firm as it has done for so much of the season and the title of Aviva Premiership Rugby Champions 2011 went home with the Saracens team.
For Saracens Chairman Nigel Wray it was reward for over a decade of investment in the club.
"Somehow or other we've got an outstanding group of people on and off the field who work for each other and won't give in.
"We've got to work harder and see how we can get better," said Wray, citing Leinster as a model. "We do a lot of good things but we need to do everything better. We've got a lot of intelligent people thinking about it but there's no guarantee. What we mustn't do is rest on our laurels in any way.
"If I'd known how much it would cost, not just in terms of money but emotionally, of course I wouldn't have done it.
“Having done it you don't regret a damn thing.”
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