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Northampton secure third straight Premiership victory with Gloucester win

By PA
James Ramm (c) of Northampton Saints is congratulated by Tom Collins and Fraser Dingwall of Northampton Saints during the Gallagher Premiership Rugby match between Northampton Saints and Gloucester Rugby at cinch Stadium at Franklin's Gardens on February 25, 2023 in Northampton, England. (Photo by Tony Marshall/Getty Images)

In-form Northampton dealt Gloucester’s play-off hopes another blow with a 41-34 victory in a compelling affair at the cinch Stadium at Franklin’s Gardens.

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The hosts secured a third consecutive Gallagher Premiership victory as they gained revenge for a defeat at Kingsholm in December.

Saints scored six tries through Alex Waller, Callum Braley, Alex Moon, Sam Graham, Tommy Freeman and Fraser Dingwall, while braces from Seb Blake and Jamal Ford-Robinson, as well as a Matias Alemanno five-pointer, secured two hard-earned bonus points for Gloucester.

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After a James Grayson penalty opened the scoring for the hosts, the visitors were first over the whitewash with a trademark driving maul that saw Blake touch down.

Saints responded well as Waller crashed over from short range for Saints’ first try of the day.

Gloucester piled on the pressure in the Saints’ 22 as half-time approached, which featured Alemanno being magnificently held up by Graham, and the barrelling Albert Tuisue’s touch down ruled to have been dropped by the TMO.

George Skivington’s men eventually grabbed another try in classic driving maul fashion as Blake added another score to his total for the day to level things up at 10-10 at the interval.

Saints were fast out of the blocks in the second half as a marauding break from James Ramm got the home side in the Gloucester 22, before Braley caught the visitors’ guards napping around the breakdown with a successful reach for the line.

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The Cherry and Whites responded strongly through Ollie Thorley, who received the ball in the wide channel from Chris Harris to score with ease following some counter-attacking brilliance from Santiago Carreras.

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Shortly afterwards, Moon found himself one-on-one with Lloyd Evans as the ball was thrown into the wide channel metres from the line, and predictably steamed over the smaller man to stretch out Saints’ lead.

A spectacular Ramm 50/22 was the perfect foundation for Phil Dowson’s side to secure their bonus point as a ball into the pocket from Braley allowed Graham to drive over from short range.

Saints continued their march as Freeman capitalised on an Evans fumble by sweeping up the ball and sprinting over from the halfway line uncontested.

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The hosts’ sixth was superb as they showcased some beautiful handling in an attack littered with thrilling offloads that saw Dingwall touch down.

Gloucester’s late flurry ensured the visitors did not leave empty-handed, as Ford-Robinson carried over from short range following a lineout.

Alemanno secured the away side’s bonus point with a clean run-in facilitated by a Lewis Ludlow offload.

Ford-Robinson added another in the closing play with a pick-and-drive metres from the line, before Billy Twelvetrees’ conversion earned a second bonus point.

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J
JW 8 minutes ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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