Northampton Saints v Toulon: Five takeaways from Champions Cup clash as forgotten England back shines in front of Steve Borthwick

James While
Northampton Saints back George Furbank celebrates try against Toulon.

Northampton Saints back George Furbank celebrates try against Toulon.

Following a 22-19 victory for Northampton Saints over Toulon in the Champions Cup, here’s our five takeaways from the game at Franklin’s Gardens on Friday.

Yellow peril

Northampton Saints took their European run to two wins as a helter skelter match saw them overcome a rusty Toulon.

Remarkable scenes took place in the 76th minute of the match when referee Craig Evans deemed Matteo le Corvec’s high tackle on Saints debutant Charlie Savala was high enough to despatch him to the sin-bin.

However, after the tackle, the referee had played a long advantage and as Northampton recycled and got pace and width onto the ball, centre Jeremy Sinzelle extended his arms and was deemed to have knocked on deliberately. Whilst a clear overlap wasn’t evident, Evans clearly had had enough of two incidents on top of each other and despatched the Toulon centre to the bin.

From the resulting driving maul, with Juarno Augustus adding huge impetus in carry in his first appearance for Saints this season, Tom Lockett scorched over for the try that sealed the match after Toulon had made a remarkable comeback courtesy of their French stars Gabin Villiere, Charles Ollivon and Melyvn Jaminet, but the bottom line is, Toulon’s European campaign now looks all but over with only a mathematical chance of qualifying for the round-of-16.

Saints however look like they are home and hosed as they face Bayonne in Round Three back here at the Gardens, with the daunting trip to Munster and the Thomond Park roar in their final match.

Saints power

The headlines of Northampton tend to be around their glittering back play and creativity with ball in hand. However, underneath that, the real soundbites of Saints competitiveness is their new-found physicality and on Friday night we saw that in abundance as they muscled up in a manner that’s eluded them in previous seasons.

It goes without saying that Courtney Lawes is always going to be mentioned in despatches, and his hit on Jaminet in the first half was absolutely seismic, and his mighty presence saw him grab the Player of the Match award, but alongside him Sam Graham, a former chef at England’s Pennyhill Park training base, put in a superb defensive display, hammering the Toulon breakdown.

With Alex Moon also flexing his muscles, including a superb strip off Ollivon, and with Temo Mayanavanua also impressing, it was the work of Northampton at the breakdown, creating quick ball for their back running two and three out around the corner, that really defined their season’s improvement.

With Saints backs profiting from their forwards dominance, and with Fin Smith and Alex Mitchell undoubtedly impressing the watching England coaches Richard Hill, Tom Harrison and the main man Steve Borthwick, this was against an endorsement of the real improvement of Northampton this campaign as they start to look like a team threatening for silverware this season.

Furbank shines

The only issue George Furbank has ever appeared to have to the English public is to be labelled one of Eddie Jones’ project players. Fast tracked into the Test team on promise over performance, Furbank was seen as an oddity by many and one of Jones’ many confusing selections.

But the Saint is maturing into quite some player; blessed with pace and vision he absolutely shone in this match, reminded all, and the watching England selectors, that he’s an option in any of the back three positions and of course, fly-half, a position where he’s played a number of times this season.

He grabbed a brace of tries tonight and but for an unfortunate bounce on a chase through he might well have grabbed a hat-trick as both he and Smith shone in a thrilling 10/15 partnership for Saints.

Scrummage mess

Sitting high up in the media seats in Franklin’s Gardens, there’s four places marked clearly with commemorative plaques. “David Powell” is the legend inscribed on the seat backs, and the former England and British Lions prop sitting next to the press, better known as ‘Piggy’ to all in the game, just about summed up the match as he bellowed across his beloved pitch:

“As an ex prop myself, all this messing around in the scrum is a bloody pain! Who wants to watch this rubbish!”

And he was right. The scrums were a mess of the highest order. Toulon spoke of scrum smarts in the week yet spent the evening scrummaging as dumbly as they did against Exeter last weekend, looking for bullying and power over technique and intellect. With their lineout struggling for accuracy and their scrummage fighting to remain legal, they conceded four scrum penalties and four lineout infringements in the first half alone (three not straight throws), struggling greatly to get any form of purchase into the territory of the Saints half.

It was a remarkably frustrating performance, especially given that they possess a couple of the best lineout operators in the world in David Ribbans and Ollivon, and it’s perplexing to try and understand precisely what went wrong – but once again, as against Chiefs, their set-piece cost them any form of reward in this game.

Toulon work-ons

This was a remarkably rudderless performance from Toulon and their injury tolls at half-back and elsewhere are costing them a remarkable degree of fluency. Their kicking strategy, something they worked on all week, was awful in execution, with underhit kicks, low scudding grubbers and no use of their tall ball winners under any form of meaningful box or bomb kicking.

But above all it was how narrow they got in attack that should be the biggest concern for Pierre Mignoni. They seemed intent on going only one way – right through the middle of Saints, and with the back-row physicality the home side displayed, this was a tactic that simply was doomed to fail.

Nothing could have summed up their blunt threat more than the two minutes they spent camped on the Northampton line early in the second half, where 15 Toulon players worked within a radius of no more than 20 metres, giving little contrast or option to the possession they had.

However, the moment they did manage to get into the wide channels, Toulon’s outstanding player, France’s Jaminet, started a move down the left wing with brilliant interplay with Villiere and, after almost blowing the move, powerful carries by Ollivon close to the line sucked in enough Saints to allow Jaminet to start what he’d finished as he went over in the opposite corner.

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