Northampton Saints v Bayonne: Five takeaways as England hopefuls shred woeful French outfit

Following Northampton Saints’ comprehensive 61-14 victory over Bayonne in the Champions Cup, here are five takeaways from the clash at Franklin’s Gardens.

The top line

A match of men against boys as Northampton Saints once again demonstrated their incredible form, smashing Bayonne in a fantastic Champions Cup victory at a packed Franklin’s Gardens.

Nine tries from Tommy Freeman (1′), Tom Pearson (13′)(20′)(44′), Courtney Lawes (26′), Curtis Langdon (31′), Alex Waller (38′)(48′) and Tom James (70′) underlined that this is a Saints team at the peak of their considerable powers, brilliant either side of the ball and playing rugby with precision and skill levels that are rarely seen outside of New Zealand or South Africa.

It’s not only the stars that shine; on Friday, the supporting cast also had their days – Sam Graham was huge all evening at number eight, Waller grabbed a brace in between his propping duties and, in the engine room, and Alex Coles showed precisely why England capped him a couple of years ago.

It was a night to remember for the Saints, but there are choppier waters ahead as they will surely, as a result of their own success, lose a lot of players to Six Nations call-ups. But right now, there’s no better team to watch in the whole of Europe, and once again, they thrilled their passionate home supporters with a masterclass of running rugby.

Tommy guns

For the onlooking members of the England coaching staff, Richard Hill and Richard Wigglesworth, their notebooks will be full of bolded ticks with a number of underlinings under the names of several of the Saints players.

At the centre of the effort were both Tommy’s – player of the match Freeman and Pearson – who both had stellar matches with ball in hand, with Freeman absolutely shining in his creation in midfield and wide channels.

For the Saints’ three-quarter, there’s a lot of chatter about whether or not he plays at 13 or on the wing, but the key to his play is his willingness to get himself with ball in hand, whether it be in the 12, 13 or wide channels. He may only have grabbed one try this evening, the opener off a wonderful move down the left wing, but his roaming presence set up so much coming down the centre channels, and it was his work that set up Pearson’s first and the support effort for Courtney Lawes to gallop over late in the second half.

At openside, Pearson is starting to look like the former England representative watching him – the early rangey version of the great Hill, who used to pop up everywhere at openside for club and country. His hat-trick will grab the headlines, but that’s only part of it. He was huge in defence and showed a marked improvement in his carry through contact in a memorable performance. England need back-rowers who can score tries, in the modern image of All Black and French loose forwards and in Pearson, they might just have their man.

👏 Tom Pearson rounds off his hat-trick!#InvestecChampionsCuppic.twitter.com/qKa2vmpYxk

— Planet Rugby (@PlanetRugby) January 12, 2024

Saints superpowers

Watching the Phil Dowson-Sam Vesty iteration of Northampton Saints is starting to become something very special indeed.

It’s a game played at an incredible pace, based upon stretch skill levels and a confidence and belief that’s at the apex of any domestic rugby side in Europe.

But the interesting thing is there is no magic formula in the manner that Northampton play; it’s the level of precision in their execution that is their superpower. They play predominantly a three-man pod (two forwards, one back) off nine at early phases (one and two), and once the second wave of momentum comes, they change the pod up to three backs and a forward following the flow side of the attack with huge speed.

It’s the little things. The ability of Alex Mitchell to fire a pass that is sympathetic for the receiver to run on at pace. It’s the accuracy and dynamism of their clear outs – minimal bodies, self-recycling, maximum support runners for the next phase – and it’s understanding their strengths and weaknesses in the set-piece, and creating a playbook to minimise the weaknesses.

When players are performing at these levels, they become almost self-coaching – they own their style, they impose their skills, and the best thing of all is that they play with a sense of fun and enjoyment that can often be absent in the modern game.

The Smiths

With the announcement in the week that this year’s Six Nations will feature players’ names on shirts for the first time, the England kit man is almost in the position where he can safely prepare a stencil for the 10 shirt with the legend ‘Smith’ on it.

The only question remaining to be answered is which Smith? Marcus or Fin? In truth, both players have a raft of support both in the press and in public, but there’s a growing belief amongst those that matter that it’s the Saints man that might just get the starting nod.

Even going back to Fin Smith’s days at Worcester, Saints attack coach Vesty, a man that knows a thing or two about outside half play, went on a mission to attract him to Franklin’s Gardens. Indeed, it’s believed that Vesty’s strategy was to sign him at all costs, and the negotiations were well underway before the unfortunate collapse of the wonderful Warriors.

With England set to announce their Six Nations training squad on January 17, there’s little doubt that Fin will be in it and with his club partnership with Mitchell shining, there’s a great chance the Saints half-back pairing might be the England starters in Rome. But on the theme of club combinations and Smiths, imagine the ageless Danny Care and Marcus trotting on after 55 minutes. It could be something very special indeed, albeit for a time-limited period.

Bayonne woes

Bayonne have lost seven of their 12 Top 14 matches this season and languish in 10th in the table. In Europe, they’ve failed to win a match, drawing against Munster in an unedifying performance.

Watching them at the Gardens, it’s easy to see why. Their defence is paper thin, disorganised and without speed or physicality. They consistently pack their channel defence with props and locks, absolutely suicidal against a team with the pace and precision of Saints, and they try to operate a 12-1-2 deep defence but lack the speed of pendulum to allow the extra defender to get around to the wide attacking channel.

It’s almost comedic that any professional side has such deep flaws in both structure and execution and against Northampton, they were absolutely torn apart – not in the wide channels but down the middle as waves of pacy runners took on their tight five forwards in primary defensive positions.

Without any sort of defence or ball-winning platform, it was inevitable they’d struggle, but the match statistic of 2.24 minutes in total (that included four reset scrums) in the Saints 22 told you everything you needed to know about their performance.

Sure, Tom Spring nipped over for their first try, but only as Saints were in the throes of emptying their bench, and Saints’ Graham might want to ask the officials how on earth his clear fair jackal was missed in the lead-up to the second try by Aurelien Callandret after a neat overhead kick.

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