Heavily rotated Northampton brushing aside Leicester show times have truly changed
Northampton Saints 40 Leicester Tigers 17
An East Midlands derby that effectively signalled the end of Leicester Tigers’ hopes of reaching the play-offs of the Gallagher Premiership, and more significantly, provided compelling evidence that Northampton Saints are the real deal.
As the league’s standard-bearer in the semi-finals of the Champions Cup, Phil Dowson found it necessary to rotate his squad following European knockout victories over Munster and the Bulls, leaving out stellar names including Courtney Lawes, Fin Smith and Tommy Freeman, with George Furbank starting at fly-half.
It was a bold call, given the importance this fixture means to both sets of supporters, and yet by the end this proved to be a brutal demolition of a Tigers side that had asked plenty of questions of their opponents in the first half, but found themselves without an answer to the Saints’ ruthless attacking game after the interval.
Those rivals who looked to this fixture as a moment of vulnerability for Dowson’s side were sorely disappointed. What is most impressive about this squad is their ability to rise to the challenge and problem-solve on the hoof while never losing sight of their attacking instincts that make them a joy to watch.
With just three rounds to go, Dowson’s side find themselves with a commanding seven-point lead over second-placed Saracens. The big games keep coming, with a trip to Twickenham on Saturday to face Harlequins, another Champions Cup semi-finalist and league title contender. But on this form, they look unstoppable, in their bid to win a first Premiership title since 2014 at least.
The decisive moment came when Leicester centre Solomone Kata was sent off for a head-on-head upright tackle on Fraser Dingwall just on the hour mark. At the time the Saints led 18-17, and from there on they were no way back. Immediately Dowson introduced Fin Smith from the bench as if to turn the screw and Saints powered on to score three more tries.
A RED CARD 🔴
Solomone Kata with a dangerous tackle puts the Leicester Tigers down to 14 men 😬🏉#NORvLEI | #GallagherPrem pic.twitter.com/WfEYOrdKLF— Rugby on TNT Sports (@rugbyontnt) April 20, 2024
Robbie Smith was driven over from a line-out, before Fin Smith combined with Freeman to set up George Hendy for yet another length-of-the-field try before Tom James pounced when Phil Cokanasiga spilled the ball on his line after a soaring counter-attack involving Furbank and James Ramm. A 30-metre drop-goal by Fin Smith completed the rout.
“We are not making statements, I am just happy to win the derby,” said Dowson, who despite his relative inexperience as a director of rugby, sets the tone with his measured calmness. This weekend we are heading to Twickenham to face Quins and we know what their record is like there so it is one thing rolling after another but that is a real positive.
“That’s where we want to be. As a group of players, we said at the start of the season those are the fixtures you want to play in. You want to play Munster, you want to play them home and away. That’s great. They are one of the storied sides in European rugby. We all want to take that challenge and likewise Quins, I think they have already sold 45,000 tickets. Perfect. Let’s see who we are next week.
“Let’s see if the lads who get the opportunity next week represent Saints in the same way as we got today. I said at half time that the first 40 minutes looked a lot more like Leicester’s game plan and than it looked like our game plan. In the second half the whole atmosphere was way better in terms of what we were trying to do and get our game on the pitch.
“We have talked about whether we can get to the end of the season in a good position from an availability point of view and from a physical point of view and a psychological point of view. That is what we tried to do this week.”
The flourish with which Saints finished the contest was not reflective of first-half which for long periods Leicester dominated with an aggressive defence and their ability to make a mess of the breakdown.
Indeed Leicester were worthy of their early lead, taking advantage of a yellow card shown to Elliot Millar Mills for a head-on tackle on Ollie Chessum and moments later scoring a try by Julian Montoya from a driving line-out maul.
Saints’ off-loading game began to make an impact but they still trailed by 10-6 at the interval after two penalties by Furbank while Alex Mitchell was held up over the line.
But two tries within six minutes of the restart turned the game on its head, with first hooker Curtis Langdon showing the finish of an outside back before Jamie Shillcock’s deliberate knock-on earned him a yellow card and conceded a penalty try.
A try by Jasper Wiese from a line-out deceptively brought the game back to life before Kata’s red allowed Saints to dominate the final quarter.
Dan McKellar, Leicester’s director of rugby, admitted his side’s second half performance had not been good enough, pointing to their discipline.
“Since the World Cup we’ve seen they’ve tried to mitigate down where possible,” he said of Kata’s red card. “I thought yellow was fair enough. It wasn’t blatant foul play, it was a rugby accident, yellow card and 10 minutes. But they thought it was a red card so we’ll go through the process now. It was one of [the turning [points]. We had two other yellow cards before that. The second half just wasn’t good enough. We were well beaten today. I’m not even really worried about the playoffs, I’m just worried about performance.”
Match details
Scoring sequence: 0-5, Montoya try, 0-7, Pollard con; 3-7, Furbank pen; 3-10, Pollard pen; 6-10, Furbank pen; 11-10, Langdon try, 18-10, penalty try; 18-15, Wiese try, 18-17, Pollard con; 23-17, R Smith try, 25-17, Furbank con; 30-17 Hendy try, 32-17, Furbank con; 37-17, T James try; 40-17 Smith dropped goal;
Northampton Saints: J Ramm; G Hendy, T Litchfield (T Freeman 56), F Dingwall, T Seabrook (F Smith 60); G Furbank, A Mitchell (T James 71); A Waller (T Haffar 49), C Langdon (R Smith 59), E Millar Mills (T Davison 59), A Moon, T Mayanavanua (T Lockett 60), A Coles, L Ludlam (S Graham 70), J Augustus.
Leicester Tigers: J Shillock (M Brown 56), F Steward, D Kelly (P Cokanasiga 68), S Kata, O Hassell-Collins; H Pollard, J v Poortvliet (B Youngs 64); J Cronin (F van Wyk 54), J Montoya (C Clare 54), D Cole (W Hurd 46), H Wells (K Hatherell 64), O Chessum, F Carnduff, T Reffell (O Cracknell 38), J Wiese.
Referee: C Ridley (RFU)
