'They're not like us' - Saints' special spirit creates shot at glory

Yahoo

24-05-2025

Investec Champions Cup final: Northampton Saints v Bordeaux-Begles
Venue: Principality Stadium, Cardiff Date: Saturday, 24 May Kick-off 14:45 BST
Coverage: Live TV coverage on Welsh language channel S4C on iPlayer, live radio coverage on BBC Radio 5 Live and BBC Radio Northampton, with live text commentary on the BBC Sport website
Nina Simone's Sinnerman was part of Northampton's pre-game dressing-room playlist.
After the match though, as Northampton celebrated a semi-final upset in the bowels of Aviva Stadium, coach Phil Dowson, unconsciously perhaps, channelled Kendrick Lamar.
"It's all about connection," he told the players. "It runs through our DNA."
"They," he said, gesturing through the dressing room wall towards Leinster, "are not like us."
It is a theme Saints have returned to, both on that day and throughout their Champions Cup campaign.
"I promise you, the connection they [Leinster] have isn't built like ours," captain Fraser Dingwall told his team-mates in their pre-match huddle at Aviva Stadium.
"Our connection, that we build every day, is way stronger."
It is an elusive quality, difficult to define and impossible to see in data. Many clubs say they have it. But Northampton's claim seems strong.
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Bristol's Ellis Genge, who gets the close-up view on England duty, described their backline as the "most tight-knit I have ever seen in terms of being genuine mates".
From afar, it also seems evident.
Away in Pretoria against the Bulls, at home against Munster and away to Leinster in the Aviva, when the pressure has come on, Northampton have risen together, rather than splintered apart.
Dingwall says their unity is not a chance collection of like minds, but forged by the way the club operates.
"Firstly we all grew up together," he told Rugby Union Weekly. "This whole club is built on the academy system."
Northampton aim for more than half of their senior squad to be homegrown. This season they achieved it, with 32 out of 61 first-team players being academy graduates.
The bonds go way back.
Now 26, Dingwall was 16 when he first met George Furbank, with whom he has shared the captaincy this year.
As teenagers, the pair lived together for two years in one of the houses provided to youngsters by the club. Scrum-half Alex Mitchell would come round to play console games.
"This isn't necessarily a town where there is loads to do, but what you do have is the people around you at this club," Dingwall added.
"You become more than just colleagues, you become friends, and they become very close friendships because you spend so much time together, both at the club and off the pitch.
"That connection and how much every team-mate means to each other drives performance and development.
"You see people get better, but also your friends go through life's milestones as well - getting married and having kids – so there are some really nice bits around it."
"My mum even mentions it!" scrum-half Mitchell told BBC Radio Northampton's The Saints Show.
"She says 'you guys are so close'.
"In the academy the bonding is natural – the club have four or five houses and you are hanging around each other's the whole time."
Dingwall and Mitchell are now senior figures.
As well as their own homes, they have upgraded to the 'Mayfair' section of the Franklin's Gardens dressing room – distant from the toilets, a little more spacious – since the departure of Lewis Ludlam, Courtney Lawes and Alex Waller last summer.
But the band-of-brothers ethos remains strong, replenished by new blood.
There are team trips, communal holidays, late-night pranks and, earlier this month, there was a meal.
Dingwall smilingly put aside his own disappointment of missing out to host a celebration for Mitchell, Fin Smith, Tommy Freeman and Henry Pollock on their call-ups to the British and Irish Lions squad.
The loss of senior voices in the summer has made room for others in the huddle - a different generation riffing on the same togetherness.
"George Furbank is a quality captain, very similar to Dingwall, he can send a rocket up you if needed," said Mitchell when asked about dressing room leaders.
"Fin Smith is really good. Henry Pollock loves effing and jeffing, but brings huge energy .
"Alex Coles is really good and Curtis Langdon will be first over the top to get at the opposition."
On Saturday the opposition is Bordeaux-Begles - another team arriving with a higher wage bill and shorter odds.
Can Saints find the words to sum up their connection and snuff out the stars once more?
In a final of fine margins, it could be the difference.
"I'm sure every other dressing room will say the same thing, and it is no disrespect to the other team," said Dingwall.
"I just fully believe that the group we have this year is so bought into what we're trying to do, so connected emotionally off the pitch, that you get 1% extra fight out of people.
"That goes a long way."
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