Northampton Saints Director of Rugby Phil Dowson praised the quality of Saints’ front-line players in their 93-10 dismantling of visiting Georgian side, Black Lion.
Saints ran in an impressive 15 tries under the Friday Night Lights at Franklin’s Gardens as many of their international stars, including Henry Pollock, Fin Smith and many more, returned to the fray, priming themselves for next week’s Gallagher PREM opener against Newcastle Red Bulls.
“Some of the experiences the younger players got in the opening two rounds of the PREM Rugby Cup have been tough but incredibly valuable,” Dowson explained.
“From a performance point of view, there are loads in there that we want to do. We want to play fast; some of our breakdown fundamentals were very good.
“There were elements of the game that we’d still like to do a bit more of, but if you’ve only got one opportunity for the internationals to play, and that was it, you don’t always get what you want.”
Saints commence their PREM title defence this Friday night as they take on Newcastle Red Bulls in front of an expected packed-out crowd at Franklin’s Gardens, and Dowson insisted his side are preparing for the challenge in the best way possible.
“There’s clearly stuff we’ll still work on in the training week,” he continued. “The work ethic from the support staff, the coaches and the playing group has been excellent. We’ve approached all our challenges in the right way.
“There’s still loads in there because we can’t go from conceding 90 points in a game to scoring 90 points in a game and not have the same mindset around how we evaluate it and go after those improvements we need to make.”