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The ‘really unacceptable’ things Northampton are looking to fix

Northampton walk off at The Rec following their loss to Bath (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

Northampton Saints sound like they are on a round two mission to greatly improve their discipline following last weekend’s campaign opening loss at Bath. The defending champions conceded 14 penalties at The Rec and they also had a yellow card brandished to new signing Josh Kemeny towards the end of their 16-38 defeat.

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Seven of the 10 Gallagher Premiership teams that returned to action last weekend had double-figure penalty counts against them – with Northampton third on the list behind worst offenders Bristol, who gave up 17, and Exeter on 15.

Ahead of hosting the Chiefs at Franklin’s Gardens this Saturday, director of rugby Phil Dowson has put the heat on his team’s behaviour in the hope that it can keep them in the fight for an entire match, rather than slip away in the final quarter as happened at Bath after Fin Smith closed the margin to 16-21 with a 61st-minute penalty kick.

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    Asked what he made of the array of penalties his team conceded, Dowson explained: “The Dupont rule, we got caught twice on and that is something from a coaching point of view, from my point of view, we need to be better. We have been going hard at it at training but clearly not hard enough. So that’s disappointing, but there is some clear understanding around that.

    “The things that are done that are really frustrating are we pushed somebody into touch when it was our lineout in their half, we slammed down on somebody when he was prone and they get an easy exit when we are on the ascendency and are on the front foot. We talked back to the ref, things that are really unacceptable because they let the pressure off a team.

    Penalties

    8
    Penalties Conceded
    14
    0
    Yellow Cards
    1
    0
    Red Cards
    0

    “At 60 minutes I felt like we were we were on the front foot and we had some momentum but we didn’t convert that because of those more unacceptable ones.

    “There is always going to be penalties. We don’t want to be bottom of the chart in terms of the penalties given away because we don’t want to be too clinical, we want to get in amongst the fight. But at the same time, we don’t want to be the team at the very top giving away the dumb ones.”

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    Gallagher Premiership round one penalties conceded
    17: Bristol
    15: Exeter (+1YC)
    14: Northampton (+1YC)
    13: Leicester (+1RC, 1YC), Sale
    11: Gloucester
    10: Harlequins
    9: Saracens
    8: Bath
    7: Newcastle

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    Jenny Rose 33 minutes ago
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    Spew_81 1 hour ago
    Stat chat: Clear favourite emerges as Sam Cane's All Blacks successor

    Agree for Savea to be successful at 7 he will have to remodel his game, again. But he has shown the ability to do that with his move from 7 to 8. Savea will have to focus more on the roles of a 7 e.g. tacking and cleaning out. The benefit will be that Savea can take advantage of running opportunities, in a similar way that Michael Jones used to. How Savea is used e.g. as a primary runner, or as a support runner will come down to the attack coach. But having a 7 who is a genuine running option will provide the All Blacks with another option. That option could be unutilized as a support runner. If put into the gap Savea will be very hard to stop.

     

    With Sititi at 8 (the best position to make use of his skills) the key will be who is chosen at 6, ideally someone with bulk and a hard work ethic. S Barrett could fulfil that role. I would choose Finau as he has proven ability to effect very heavy tackles. But it’s an open race at the moment.

     

    Agree, taking in account multiple factors in analysis makes the analysis a lot more difficult. There are so many more potential outcomes to take into account. Getting this done in time to meet publishing deadlines would be difficult. I guess it’s up to the readers to speculate on things like that.

     

    Papali’I is definitely in the conversation. He is a proven high volume tackler, at times he has shown a very useful running game. Also, at 1.93m/113kg he has the size to cover at 6 and to be used as a jumper in the lineout. With the Blues in a slump, how he performs in the next few games could be a good indicator, if he steps up he could regain a black jersey.

     

    Sotutu could be used at 6 or eight. If the trio contained Sotutu I’d put him at 6 as Sititi seems to be a more slightly more elusive runner that is slightly better at setting up others. Sotutu could fit into the trio at 6. A key work on for Sotutu is to lower his tackle height.

    33 Go to comments
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