Saintly Thoughts

By BrianC
November 10 2004

This Saturday we make our annual trip to Franklin's Gardens, one of the nicest rugby venues in the country, where we take on Northampton Saints.

By their own high standards of recent years The Saints are having a poor season. They won their first two games of the season, at home to Bath and away at Quins but have since had a run of six defeats. They now find themselves, almost incredibly, down at 10th place in the table with thirteen points.

So what has gone wrong at Franklin's Gardens? Former Ulster coach Alan Solomons took over the reigns last summer and it looks as if he is struggling to get things to gel. His track record at Ulster was impressive, the only person to have coached an Irish club to victory in the Heineken Cup. Is the structure of a ZP club that different to that of an Irish province?

Were this the round ball game he may well be clutching a P45 by now. As it is rugby in general and Northampton in particular he is likely to be given some time, perhaps two or three seasons, to get things together. Whereas certain elements of the Quins support are calling for heads to roll I have seen little evidence of this amongst Saints supporters.

The Saints also lost a number of key players last summer. The most notable of the departures was that of our old friend Matt 'cactus' Dawson to Wasps. Amongst the Saints supporters there is a general feeling that this season they are lacking something in the 10/11/12 area.

Despite the recent Venter/Dawson spat I've long felt that Saints supporters and we have a certain affinity. Neither is an 'establishment' club. Whilst Saints have enjoyed some success in recent years it is not something they take for granted. They suffered and survived relegation just over a decade ago. That they bounced back was in no small part due to dedication of their supporters.

Like us they have made the transition from being a somewhat unglamorous club into the mainstream without having had a huge amount of money to hand. They were the first club we hosted to a Saint Patrick’s party at the Madejski. This was arguably the very first time we had some decent atmosphere in the stadium. The very first time we came to see the potential of the place.

Our games against Northampton have all been away victories in the last couple of seasons. We have twice won at FG and they have twice won at the Madejski. Our last encounter being a particularly bad 15 - 36 thrashing by them in January this year.

Saints will be missing Ben Cohen and Steve Thompson on international duty. We will be without Wobbie Wussell.

With both teams aiming for Heineken Cup qualification this is a crucial game. If we do win this we should move into the top half of the table and will start to look good for one of those valued HC places. Saints need to win this game if they are to stand any realistic chance of a top five finish. Despite our debacle at home to Leeds two weeks ago I feel we are playing better now than at the start of the season. We can win this game. I will be interested to see the bookies odds of Friday; I doubt they'll have much difference between the two teams.