Inside Northampton Saints and how the best club in England plan to get even better

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It is 10 days before the start of the new Gallagher Prem season and Franklin’s Gardens is a hive of activity. Over in the High Performance Centre, director of rugby Phil Dowson and his coaching staff are working the reigning English champions hard – a large squad of established stars, new recruits and budding Northampton Saints hurry through handling drills, with head coach Sam Vesty as energetic as ever despite a recent knee operation. Young Italian wing Edoardo Todaro is helping compatriot Malik Faissal bed in; as the rest of the squad disappears into the stadium itself for lunch, lock JJ van der Mescht ducks away, keeping to a strict one-meal-a-day diet. At 145kg, the South African second row is heavy enough as is.

Over in the supporters’ village, which sits beyond the lake behind the South Stand, they could do with having Van der Mescht’s heft to hand. The furniture that will adorn the new and vastly improved events space has just arrived, with the final licks of paint being put on after a summer transformation. Gone are the unsightly and unwieldy tent, mismatched parking spaces and Foundation building that crowded the space; in their place have arrived fresh tarmac, streamlined catering outlets and a fancy, AI-powered, help-yourself bar.

New ticketing and turnstile systems promise to make entry smoother, while a dedicated area has been carved out to make families feel more welcome. The hope is that the ground can be even more attractive for conference use and other outside bookings on non-matchdays to diversify revenue. Other investment could well follow into both playing and non-playing facilities.

Northampton are, if not already clear, doing a lot right. The supporters’ village overhaul has required a seven-figure spend but it is one made from a position of strength. Success on the field has led to fresh financial investment off it, while season tickets have sold out quickly for the third campaign running. That run encompasses two Prem titles and a Champions Cup final; Saints’ fans have certainly been treated of late.

But part of the reason that Dowson is driving his squad hard is in pursuit of a new challenge – having rather flunked their title defence two years ago, finishing eighth after losing a coterie of key leaders, all in Northampton hope to again be lifting the trophy come next June. Establishing themselves as a dynastic side in the manner that Leicester, Wasps and Saracens have been across the Prem’s 30 years is a goal.

“No one has gone back-to-back for a long time. Why not us?” Dowson, with Vesty as ever sat alongside him, asks. “That’s something that fires us, but it’s not something we talk about all the time.

“We have lost some key indi­vidu­als, but I feel we have approached it dif­fer­ently because we didn’t do a bril­liant job of it last time. George [Furbank] is a huge loss, and a great bloke and player. What we’re going to do is be bet­ter than last year, and the last time we did it in 2024-25 in terms of how we went about defend­ing it.

“There is lots of carry­-over from the group who exper­i­enced that, and we want to be bet­ter. From a tech­nical point of view, there are lots of parts of our game which are in good order. From an emo­tional point of view, we have the exper­i­ence of being in those situ­ations. Those things we don’t dis-count or for­get. But we also know they count for nought unless we get bet­ter.”

Other clubs are known to look at Northampton as a place that gets things right more often than not. They are noted as a club that generally grows their own – on the pitch, on the touchline, and in the boardroom. Part of their confidence in letting club captain Furbank leave was the development of 19-year-old James Pater as a possible full-back successor, with the versatility of Todaro, Tommy Freeman and George Hendy key, too. When defence coach Lee Radford was recruited by Scotland at the start of last season, initially on secondment, a managed transition could be made to made to Jim Henry, formerly forwards transition coach. Henry has built on his predecessor’s tenets and put renewed focus on winning the ball back earlier in the phase count, highlighting the post-tackle work of teams like South Africa, Bordeaux Begles and Toulouse.

Saints’ CEO Julia Chapman had been with the club for eight years before her elevation, while chair Ella Bevan follows in the footsteps of father Keith Barwell and brother Leon Barwell in taking the role. With such a family feel at all levels, it is no wonder that Eddie Hearn remarked on the bond that Henry Pollock had conveyed to him as the pair sketched out the 21-year-old’s future recently – while there were offers elsewhere, and at some point new ventures to explore, Pollock only really wanted to stay at Saints right now.

“I think it stems from the coaches, if I am honest,” Freeman, another to have recently signed fresh terms, explains. “You see how close they are, they set the environment to be yourself, to express yourself and get the best out of you. When you are allowed to be who you are and want to be, that’s when you see everyone’s best rugby. It’s not a place where we have got dictators telling you to do this or do that. That gets the best out of everyone.

“Northampton is not like London. It is a close place. You are always in the same spots. If you are not playing cards, it’s padel or golf around everyone. As much as it might not be the ‘nicest’ town, and not known for the partying, nice shops and that side of it, you kind of have to buy into everything you can do as a group. It’s pretty special.” If, again, tough choices will have to be made with players like Manny Iyogun, Archie McParland, Rory Hutchinson and Tom Litchfield out of contract, that kinship can only help.

Those tight bonds have been accentuated this year by a pre-season trip to Sri Lanka that included a cricket match against Mahela Jayawardene, Chaminda Vaas and Arjuna Ranatunga, among others. Last year’s equivalent outing was to an RAF base near Hull; most considered it a slight upgrade… “We wanted to engage in something dif­fer­ent, have some per­spect­ive, and engage with the Sri Lankan cul­ture together,” Dowson explains. “That was hugely help­ful. The heat made it very, very dif­fi­cult, but the boys got stuck in.”

Alas, a request half in jest to Pollock for use of Hearn’s private jet went unanswered. Not that the rest of the squad will let the 21-year-old get too big for his boots. “The boys here keep you very humble, which is so important,” he admits. “You don’t want to get too caught up in everything. it’s amazing to kind of have that friendship group here that can be honest with you and tell you what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong. It’s a good environment to be a part of.”

He, Freeman, Alex Mitchell and a host of others are likely to form a key part of England’s ambitions over the next 12 months leading up to the World Cup in Australia. The question beyond that, with Steve Borthwick’s long-term future unclear, is whether Dowson and Vesty may yet join them. While the tasks, and pressures, of day-to-day club coaching and all that comes with being an international figurehead are rather different, both men are keen to test themselves at the highest level at some point.

“Fundamentally, we are having a great time at Northampton, Sam and I,” Dowson insists. “With the coaches, players and staff we’ve got, those three bubbles are really connected, which you can hopefully see. You can see the club flourishing, with sellouts, the village being renovated because we are getting those sellouts. We want the Saints Foundation to be making an impact in the community. They are all things that Sam and I talk about.

“From a personal point of view, at some point, I would like to, and Sam is the same, coach international rugby. Because it is different. That is different to the NFL – Bill Belichick stays at the [New England] Patriots because he has got nowhere else to go. There is another opportunity in the same sport with a different element to it that we want to do. There is no timeline on that; that is not just England. That is just the opportunity to go and do something different and test ourselves either as a team or individually, and have new experiences.”