It’s become one of English rugby’s many clichés – the difficulties of “fighting on two fronts”, two elite and arduous competitions, with limited squad resources.

It used to hamper Wasps and Leicester in their glory days, it ruined Northampton’s 2011 season, and more recently smaller squads such as Exeter and Harlequins have fallen victim to the challenge.

The Irish are fine because they play in an uncompetitive league and don’t need to qualify for Europe; the French are fine because their salary cap is huge (it’s just doubled again this morning); whereas the English have the worst of both worlds - so the complaint goes.

Yet this is the exact problem Sarries are about to have to confront in the coming weeks: two regular Premiership fixtures, then a home semi-final, and sandwiched between them a Heineken Cup semi-final – and maybe more in each competition.

I’d rather not see our sparkling form of the last month fizzle out into two narrow failures. And deciding to abandon one competition and prioritise the other is unthinkable at this stage. So what’s the solution?

As the title suggests, the key is in having an interchangeable first team, and therefore a deep squad. At this point some will roll out the tiresome and usually misinformed accusation of not adhering to the salary cap.

Ignoring that, I would point to Sarries’ rotation policy – the brainchild of Brendan Venter, continued by Mark McCall – as the source of our depth of quality. The key is bringing in players, either from the academy or from outside, who are cheaper but with massive potential to improve – and then improving them.

Take our looseheads for example – an unknown from Cardiff and an unknown from Bristol, now one of the top pairings in the league. Or second row – a guy from Bedford Athletic working in a carpet factory and a guy just graduated from the academy, the former now an England international, the latter soon to be. Openside, again – academy players alongside an unknown Namibian.

And the reason that these players improve is not just down to good coaching, that’s never enough. It’s down to them playing a lot of first-team rugby. It’s down to the club’s philosophy of bringing every player up to the same standard, be they a multi-capped international or just-turned professional.

It’s a policy which has served us extremely well thus far, and it will be deployed again as we approach ‘the business end of the season’. These games against Gloucester and Bath coming up, sandwiched between various semi-finals, are opportunities for players to rest if they need, or sharpen up if they need. And the personnel can change without affecting the quality of the performance – not that the results are desperately important anymore.

Last week, Borthwick, Brits, Fraser, Joubert, Hargreaves and Farrell were all rested, with Vunipola and Goode benched. This week, it may be the turn of Barritt, Stevens, De Kock and Ashton – but the luxury is, the pressure is off and the players won’t be forced wither way because the back-up is there.

So, in theory, the squad should be ready to take on its double hurdle. Whether they can be successful will be seen in the next few weeks, starting with the visit to Gloucester.