Northampton leave Croke Park with pride, frustration, and vital experience

IT’S INDICATIVE OF Northampton’s inexperience at the highest level of European competition that only when it felt like they no longer had anything to lose did they threaten to beat Leinster.

For an hour, their basic skills deserted them in the face of outstanding Leinster defence. But in the final quarter, having been handed a lifeline by way of George Hendy’s opportune try, Northampton went for broke and their electrifying attack sparked into life.

In the end, the Premiership-leading Saints — several of their players competing in their first game of this magnitude — departed Croke Park with a bittersweet understanding that they could have won Saturday’s Champions Cup semi-final but that the nature of their defeat will stand them in good stead for future knockout games, wherever they may occur.

And rarely if ever again will their opposition be imbued by 80-odd-thousand fans, whose joyous atmosphere was so nearly punctured by a stirring Northampton fightback.

Saints director of rugby Phil Dowson described himself as “incredibly proud” of his players as the dust began to settle on Croke Park.

“We spoke a lot this week around wanting to play against the best sides and find out where we are. We also want to play in the best stadiums. This is a historic venue. We were excited about the opportunity to play in front of 82,000.

“Not everything went right but we said we wanted to be relentless and trust what we’ve done all season. There’s clearly some frustration that we didn’t play particularly well in the first half, we couldn’t get our game going.

“The effort the lads put in to give ourselves an opportunity towards the end of the game I thought was outstanding.

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“Leinster are a very good side and they had a couple of weeks to really get into ‘Northampton,’” Dowson added, referring to Leinster’s decision to send a second-string squad to South Africa in the URC while the Saints continued at full tilt in their domestic league.

Northampton director of rugby Phil Dowson.

“Some of these players in our group like Courtney (Lawes) and ‘Furbs’ (George Furbank), now, have been on the international scene and played a lot of international rugby in these environments. Someone like George Hendy, who was playing for Bedford last year, hasn’t.

“There’s a mix of experience in there which would have had an impact, undoubtedly. Was that the difference? I’m not sure.”

While Dowson praised Leinster’s ability to slow Northampton’s ball at the breakdown, fullback George Furbank was complimentary of the Blues’ defence.

The England international equally lamented his side’s inability to cope with opposition qualities for which they had prepared in advance, particularly during a first half in which Saints scarcely retained the ball for long enough to fire a shot.

“They’re obviously a quite aggressive ‘D’ so it’s tough to get the ball in the wide channels and when you do get it in there, they’re pretty aggressive in that wide breakdown and look to spoil that,” Furbank said.

“There’s an element of frustration there because we knew that was going to come. We knew we had to play through them and in the first half, we didn’t look after the ball well enough and probably tried to force things that weren’t really there to start off with.

“I think we calmed down after the first 20 minutes and created enough opportunities to score more points than we did.”

Saints’ Fraser Dingwall and George Furbank applaud travelling fans.

Explaining how Northampton eventually gained a foothold in the game, and why they had enough belief to threaten an almighty comeback at the death, Furbank said: “We’ve had plenty of experience of that throughout the season. You look back at Munster, Exeter: those two games, we had to come from a deficit.

“Once we scored that [George Hendy] try in the corner, we definitely felt like we’d given ourselves a really good shot.

“It was all quite calm messages to be honest: we spoke about getting back in their half and putting the pressure back on them.

They sort of shut up shop with 20 minutes to go and gave us a lot of kicks so it was about securing that and putting our game on the field.

“To be honest, I thought we were going to score down that left edge (in Northampton’s final attack). “We probably had the wrong people out there to score. We came close and put ourselves in a situation where we could have — and potentially should have — won that game.”

Former England international Courtney Lawes, who will leave Saints to join Brive in France’s Pro D2 next season, said: “I never felt like we were out of the game to be honest.

“In the second half, when they scored that early try, that was one of the points where we had to find ourselves as a team.

“I thought we did that. It’s credit to the players that we can have something like that happen and find a way to get back on the horse and go back at them. To do that as a team is very good for going forward.

“The disappointing thing is we didn’t really test them,” added Lawes, who produced another outstanding individual display. “We didn’t really put our game out there how we wanted to, we dropped a lot of ball, gave away a lot of penalties.

“You can’t win at the highest level if you’re doing that kind of stuff.”