As Saints come back to the Aviva Premiership and travel to Worcester Warriors on Friday night, they do so with the momentum of two good Anglo-Welsh Cup wins under their belts.
Dorian West said that to have a break from top-flight English rugby has been positive for the squad and that the chance for younger players to make themselves known has provided a few selection headaches for the coaching staff after Saints secured the top spot in Pool 1 by beating Gloucester Rugby last weekend.
“It’s been good on the whole,” West commented on this week’s podcast.
“We’ve had some youth in our team as well as some experience coming back into it that haven’t played enough or have been injured and I think we’ve had a good balance there.
“We put together a couple of good performances; Saturday was a bit closer in the end than we thought it should have been but on the whole we played pretty well.
“Quite a few players held their hands up for selection this week.
“I don’t necessarily think that Gloucester were any different to us.
“They’d got an experienced front row, two props that have played a lot of rugby, a second row that have played a lot of rugby and a couple in the back row that have played a lot of rugby so I don’t think they were massively more inexperienced than us.
“We were pleased; it’s always going to be tough, the conditions weren’t great.
“I thought we were in a good position at one stage and there was a decision and a try they scored that we didn’t feel was one and that made it a real close encounter for the last few minutes.”
Coming back into Aviva Premiership action against Worcester on Friday, West said that the club have a point to prove after losing at Sixways last season for the first time in seven games played between the two sides at the home of the Warriors.
“We were really disappointed last year. We thought we did a lot of good things and could have come away with the win but we weren’t at out best and Worcester on their own pitch with a good crowd are a tough team to beat.
“So we need to learn lessons from that and go there on Friday night and give a good account of ourselves.”
With Sixways now home to the new challenge of an artificial pitch, West is confident that Saints will not let that phase them as the hope to make it three wins on the bounce in the Aviva Premiership on Friday.
“We’ve not done too badly on artificial pitches to be honest so we’re looking forward to going there.
“It’s a new challenge for us, playing on that pitch in that ground so hopefully we can go there and do well.”
