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Telegraph
22-05-2025
- Sport
- Telegraph
The ‘old married couple' at the heart of Northampton's excitement machine
'We're like an old married couple,' Phil Dowson, Northampton's director of rugby, says of his partnership with Sam Vesty, the club's head coach, who sits beside him at the top of the stand at Franklin's Gardens. 'Sometimes I p--- him off and sometimes he p----- me off, but that only lasts about five minutes and then we get on with it.' This relationship is at the heart of Northampton's rise to the Premiership title last season and now to the precipice of European glory, all with one of the Premiership's smaller budgets. Beating Bordeaux in the Investec Champions Cup final at the Principality Stadium on Saturday having already beaten Leinster in Dublin and the Bulls in Pretoria would rank as one of English rugby's greatest coaching achievements. Part of what makes their dynamic so fascinating is that they would appear, at first glance, to be peas from very different pods: Dowson as the pragmatic, hard-bitten former Newcastle flanker and Vesty, the free-thinking, flair-loving ex-fly-half. But as Dowson points out, appearances can be deceptive. 'You don't see many tens with cauliflower ears,' Dowson says. 'He came out of the school of hard knocks with Leicester and you have to be tough to come out of that environment. Honestly, Sam is one of the most competitive, tenacious people I have ever met.' Dowson too never subscribed to the stick-it-up-your-jumper philosophy as a player and is something of an aesthete off it. 'The most excited I have seen him in the last year was talking to a curator from the V&A exhibition,' Vesty says. As well as a shared interest in art, the pair, both 43, play cricket and football together – where a misplaced pass can occasionally fracture the relationship – and are even part of the same book club having just completed Orbital, which won the 2024 Booker Prize. They first crossed paths in an Under-16s game between the North and Midlands, although neither could recall their first impressions of each other. Generally they stayed on opposing sides – Vesty for Leicester and Dowson with Newcastle and Northampton – but they did appear in the same England A side together. In total, Dowson won seven senior caps and Vesty two. 'We were both pretty average, but average players make the best coaches,' says Vesty who briefly coached Dowson at Worcester Warriors. This time last week 🤩 Can we talk about how clinical that final @Saintsrugby try was to send them to Cardiff 😮💨 Get #InvestecChampionsCup Final tickets now ➡️ — Investec Champions Cup (@ChampionsCup) May 10, 2025 They were brought back together by Chris Boyd when the New Zealander was appointed as Northampton's director of rugby in 2018. Dowson was already in the building as an assistant forwards coach but Boyd quickly decided to promote him while appointing Vesty as attack coach. 'The first thing Boydy did was sit us down in a room together and ask us with this group of players, 'what's the best way to get to where we want to go?'' Dowson says. 'We hammered it out, how are we going to play, what's our ethos, what does that look like. That has evolved over time but we have always had that alignment.' For all their similarities, which includes a natural inquisitiveness allied with a ferocious competitiveness, it is their differences which makes them work so effectively together. Vesty focuses on the detail of everything that takes place on the grass, whether in training or in matches; Dowson's remit is the bigger picture or as Vesty puts it pithily, 'I get to do all the good stuff that I want to and you get to do all the s--- stuff.' Dowson reluctantly concurs. 'My job is to clear the runway and to make it as easy as possible for Sam to get the guys on the grass. The fewer distractions that Sam and the other coaches have the better. That means focusing on the environment, the culture, admin, talking to the board, doing the media.' What Vesty does on the grass is a prime reason the club boast four British and Irish Lions – Alex Mitchell, Fin Smith, Tommy Freeman and Henry Pollock – and in the view of Boyd, speaking from New Zealand, Vesty should also have been on the plane to Australia. 'They should have taken Sam as attack coach for the Lions, 100 per cent,' Boyd says. 'His technical knowledge of being able to see things before they happen is second to none. Sam would be sitting next to me in the coaches' box and before we had even started the strike move he would say 'f--- this is not going to work, Ollie is too wide or Fraser is too tight'. 'My observation is that some of the best tactical and technical rugby coaches are a bit out there. They are a bit on the edge. Sam is certainly one of those. He's fascinating to watch on a bus trip to Exeter because he'll do the crossword for 30 minutes, he'll get bored with that and then listen to some music and then after 15 minutes he'll get his laptop out to look at how a team defends a certain play and then he'll go back to a Sudoku. He is just that type of individual.' 'Sam is a rugby coach. That's who he is' Yet in their time together at the club, it was always Dowson whom Boyd viewed as the club's next director of rugby, eventually stepping up to that role in 2022. If Vesty could see the molecular detail of a lineout strike move then Dowson could adopt the bird's eye view necessary to run a sprawling organisation. 'Sam Vesty is a rugby coach,' Boyd says. 'That's who he is. Dows is a businessman. If I had read an article tomorrow to say he was now the CEO of a FTSE 100 company that would not surprise me. Rugby just happens to be that vehicle for him at the moment.' It just so happens that Dowson runs NDi, a printing business in his spare time. The pair would not be drawn on whether their ambitions extend beyond Northampton and into the Test arena. 'The joy of sport is that there's always something else,' Dowson said. 'There's always something next. Can you do it again? Can you do it again with this group?' Regardless of the result on Saturday, their resume with Saints should put them at the top of any international coaching shortlist, not only for reaching finals but doing so with a young English core playing a brand of rugby based around speed and skill rather than brute force. Yet this is not the achievement they are proudest of in their time together at Northampton. 'It's seeing these guys mature and become people you are really proud of and having a massive impact around them and on people who watch us,' Vesty says. This is quickly echoed by Dowson highlighting the examples of Angus Scott-Young, the Australian back-rower, who runs an art class for the local community, or Tom James, the scrum-half, who regularly visits HMP Highpoint Prison in Suffolk through Northampton's foundation to help mentor young prisoners and prepare them for life on the outside. 'I think I am most proud of how much our guys do for charities outside of the club,' Dowson says. 'Highpoint is a good two-hour drive away and Tom does that all on his own time. There's loads of stuff that goes on under the radar. We try to encourage them to do that but it's off their own back. Success can look like anything you want it to. It can be a trophy, it can be a Lions call-up, but it can also be something else entirely.'
Telegraph
17-05-2025
- Sport
- Telegraph
Northampton v Saracens: Score and latest Premiership updates
17 May 2025 2:06pm 2:05PM Teams Northampton Saints: 15. James Ramm, 14. Tommy Freeman, 13. Fraser Dingwall (c), 12. Rory Hutchinson, 11. Tom Litchfield, 10. Fin Smith, 9. Alex Mitchell, 1. Emmanuel Iyogun, 2. Curtis Langdon, 3. Trevor Davison, 4. Temo Mayanavanua, 5. Tom Lockett, 6. Alex Coles, 7. Josh Kemeny, 8. Henry Pollock. Replacements: 16. Craig Wright, 17. Tarek Haffar, 18. Elliot Millar Mills, 19. Ed Prowse, 20. Angus Scott-Young, 21. Jonny Weimann, 22. Jake Garside, 23. Tom Seabrook. Saracens: 15. Alex Goode, 14. Tobias Elliott, 13. Elliot Daly, 12. Nick Tompkins, 11. Rotimi Segun, 10. Fergus Burke, 9. Ivan van Zyl, 1. Eroni Mawi, 2. Jamie George, 3. Marco Riccioni, 4. Maro Itoje (c), 5. Nick Isiekwe, 6. Juan Martin Gonzalez, 7. Ben Earl, 8. Tom Willis. Replacements: 16. Theo Dan, 17. Phil Brantingham, 18. Alec Clarey, 19. Hugh Tizard, 20. Theo McFarland, 21. Andy Onyeama-Christie, 22. Charlie Bracken, 23. Angus Hall. 1:59PM Premiership season coming towards its conclusion The Gallagher Premiership regular season is coming towards its conclusion and we are at Franklin's Gardens as last season's champions Northampton welcome Saracens for their final home game of the season. For the home side, the focus of their attention is most definitely on the Champions Cup final next weekend after a terrific victory over Leinster two weeks ago in Dublin. Going into this penultimate round of the Premiership, Northampton, who have lost only two home matches in the Premiership since October 2023, sit in eighth and cannot make the play-offs. A much-changed Northampton lost 42-14 at Exeter last weekend, which ended a five-game winning run across all competitions. Despite the Champions Cup being the main focus, Northampton's director of rugby Phil Dowson still has stressed the importance of their final home game of the season. 'The connection in the group is so strong that we think occasions like playing at home for the last time are important. We think the last home game of the season for the fans is important,' Dowson told BBC Radio Northampton. 'We think that momentum and getting back to winning ways after a disappointing result is important and these are all motivational elements - all things we want to put out on the pitch on Saturday. 'They [Saracens] are gunning for the top four, [have] a tonne of very strong players, Lions. Loads and loads of quality across the board. I am sure they are frustrated like we are with the consistency of their performance but when they are on, they are an absolute handful. It will be a really good challenge and it is something we want to get our teeth into.' Saracens currently sit sixth and, after wins for Sale and Gloucester last night, know victory today is vital to their play-off hopes. They start the day four points off Bristol in fourth, knowing any type of win would elevate them into the top four going into the final round. They thrashed Newcastle 75-28 last time out and Mark McCall's side have lost just once in their last four. McCall knows the challenge facing his side this afternoon and wants to see his side show more consistency. 'It will be the first time their home fans will be able to see their team since that famous win against Leinster, which is an incredible achievement by them, so you know it is going to be a full house,' McCall said. 'You can imagine after the team they selected against Exeter their going to go as strong as they can against us, and their strongest team is a very good team. 'If you look at our season as a whole, we have won nine Premiership games and lost seven which indicates an inconsistent team. The way I look at it, we have played at a very high level at times but the gap between our best performance and worst performance is too big. That is the challenge, to become a really consistent team and narrow that gap. We have had 16 games before this to learn from, we know what our best is and will need to recreate that on Saturday [today].' Northampton have won their last four home matches against Saracens but in the reverse fixture just before Christmas, Saracens were the victors 39-24 at the StoneX Stadium. Kick-off at Franklin's Gardens is at 3.05pm.
The Guardian
09-05-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Pollock a proud Lion after ‘nailing it' for Northampton and England
These are good times at Franklin's Gardens. Five days after the squad celebrated one of the great victories against Leinster, four of them were picked by the British & Irish Lions. The atmosphere around the old ground has been electric ever since. And while you would expect the quartet, Fin Smith, Henry Pollock, Tommy Freeman, and Alex Mitchell, to be overjoyed, what's more telling is how happy everyone else at the club seems to be on their behalf. The video of the team celebrating the news has already gone viral, and it turns out that on the night after the squad announcement, Fraser Dingwall had them all around to his house for a celebration dinner. Dingwall, of course, had an outside shot at making the Lions squad himself, but swallowed whatever disappointment he felt after being left out and opened a couple of bottles of champagne for the occasion. They're a young bunch, Mitchell is 26, Freeman 24, Smith 22, Pollock 20 – between them their Lions memories don't go back much further than the last tour to Australia back in 2013 – and have come up together. 'It's so special to do it with three of your best mates,' says Pollock, who was playing junior rugby this time last year, and, as Mitchell says, struggling to break into the Saints' first team back at the start of this season. Pollock says he only really started thinking about the possibility of making the tour in the spring, when he made his England debut, then scored a spectacular try against Sale in the Premiership. Pollock's utterly irrepressible; he has risen through the sport like one of those champagne corks Dingwall was firing on Thursday night. 'He's been fantastic, hasn't he?' says Mitchell. 'When he came through the academy last year, he had everything there, the energy, the talent, the mindset, so we knew he was going to be a quality player, but we just didn't know how soon it was going to be.' Mitchell compares him to darts' Luke Littler. 'A lot of boys, when they come into the system, tend to overthink things, but Henry is just himself, he gives it his all, and he's full of heart, and I think that's what people love to see.' 'He's just nailing it, isn't he?' Freeman says. 'He's unbelievable, just a hell of a character. You just want to give him stick, but you can't until he plays crap,' and they're all still waiting for him to do that. 'I just hope he continues doing his thing and strutting about the way he does. I do think rugby needs characters, it needs people to stoke interest.' Of course Freeman is right behind him. He has been on a hell of a run himself, after scoring a try in every single round of the Six Nations, which put him in prime contention for a spot in the squad, and then rattled off a hat-trick in that semi-final against Leinster for good measure. 'I was just trying to go about each week and try and ignore it all as much as I could,' Freeman says. 'There were squads coming out with my name on it and squads that were coming out without it, so I was just trying to completely ignore it. And then when you sat down in that room for 30 minutes and you just start doubting yourself and questioning everything. You just never know until your name comes up.' Sign up to The Breakdown The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week's action reviewed after newsletter promotion Mitchell was so nervous that he wasn't even sure he wanted to watch the announcement with his teammates, 'a few of us were like: 'Should we watch it at home?' But it was awesome having everyone there, an amazing experience.' Saints play Exeter this Sunday, but all four of them have been given the weekend off. They need it given how emotionally exhausting the last few days must have been. Mitchell says he was in bed by nine o'clock after leaving Dingwall's little party. 'I was shattered, the semi-final was hugely emotional, and then there were a lot of nerves on Wednesday and on Thursday.' And besides, they have a run of big fixtures coming up, with their home game against Saracens on 17 May leading into the final against Bordeaux-Begles a week later. The last time Saints had four players in the Lions was back in 1997 and this squad have a chance to do what that one went on to in 2000, and win the Champions Cup. Beyond that, of course, there's the thought of that first Lions match against Argentina in Dublin on 20 June and the thought of all the fun and glory.
