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Ahen the Northampton team bus set off from Twickenham on Saturday night, the celebrations were in full swing, ski goggles adorning the heads of the now well oiled Premiership champions, one of their former players could be spotted making his way across the car park. Rob Horne, the former Australian international, had flown thousands of miles to watch his old country ended their 10-year wait for the Premiership title in desperately tense fashion.
It was a touching moment to see Horne at Twickenham because he was there Northampton played a game in his honor against Leicester in October 2018. It was six months after he suffered a career-ending injury against the same opposition, aged 28. Horne captained Northampton for the first time on that April afternoon, but the early collision left him with severed nerves and permanent paralysis of his right arm.
That he made the trip on Saturday, 24 hours after making the squad, was not lost on Northampton amid the celebrations. “For the guys who played him it was a really nice surprise,” said Alex Waller, who scored the winning try in Northampton’s 2014 Premiership win and who now retires with a second prize medal.
It was also a reminder of everything the Saints have been through since that previous title, their stagnation since winning the final under Jim Mallinder and the years of failure until New Zealander Chris Boyd arrived in 2018 and began an overhaul of the club and academy , discovering the likes of George Fairbank and Alex Mitchell, which culminated in Saturday’s triumph. Boyd handed over the reins to Phil Dawson and Sam Vesty in 2022 and returned to New Zealand to enjoy retirement, but he was also at Twickenham on Saturday. “For these guys to go halfway around the world just because they’re connected says a lot about what the club means to them,” Waller said.
There was something contradictory about Northampton’s 25-21 victory in that they hardly deserved it, such was the resilience of Bath, who lost Benno Obano to a red card in the 22nd minute. Still, they are worthy winners because of the way they lit up Premiership season. Regardless, countless Bath players emerged with huge credit – Sam Underhill put in a defensive performance for the ages and said: Sometimes you can lose a little easier knowing you’ve taken the chances in front of you and have no regrets. “
Northampton became the fifth different winners of the title in the last five years and the challenge is to ensure they don’t wait another decade for the next one. Dawson has to deal with the departure of Courtney Laws and build a dynasty, and it’s hard to escape that feeling Bathroom are likely to be the biggest obstacle to this. Not long ago, Saracens and Exeter were the dominant forces in England, but Northampton and Bath are the teams of today and tomorrow. “[Bath] are a little bit like us, they have a young group, ambitious, really solid coaching group,” Dawson said. “I can’t imagine they’ll be far away next year.”
That will certainly be reflected when Steve Borthwick names his England squad for the summer tour of Japan and New Zealand on Monday. Northampton’s side could reach double figures, a testament to the changing of the guard in a team recently dominated by Saracens. It also means there will be a lot of misty eyes when the squad gets together.
“There are so many amazing players in this team that we definitely deserve to have a good number of us in this team,” said midfielder Finn Smith, who will be hoping for England’s first start against Japan or New Zealand after George Ford was excluded from the tour through injury. “We’re going to celebrate and then I’m going to try and punch myself in the face a few times and try to wake up to meet the boys in camp on Monday. I have spoken with [Richard Wigglesworth] and he said, “We expect you are not at your best.”
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Smith wasn’t at his best on Saturday, and while he’s struggled to establish himself in most of their elimination games this season, it feels like an unnecessarily harsh point to dwell on given that he still is only 22. He is also his own worst critic and a first-team England start this summer would be just reward for a remarkable season. In many ways, it also sums up the renewed sense of optimism surrounding the Premiership, 12 months after London Irish became the third club to fall off the wall, given Smith was hired by Worcester before joining the Saints after the Warriors’ bankruptcy.
“I had a little talk at the end of last season and I said, ‘If you want to be that guy who’s going to be remembered for what you want to be remembered for and do all the things you want to do, I’m going to have to start working. really hard,” Smith said. “And I tried to do that. That was a good way to end it.
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