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Courtney Lawes a doubt for Six Nations after limping off in Northampton defeat
By PA
Northampton flanker Courtney Lawes limped off in the 29th minute of the 31-13 defeat to La Rochelle in the Heineken Champions Cup to put in doubt his participation in this season’s Six Nations.
Lawes has been beset with injuries of late and if he is ruled out it will be a serious blow to England’s chances of a successful campaign.
The loss of Lawes completed a miserable afternoon for Saints, as centre Fraser Dingwall was sent off for a high challenge just 10 minutes after Lawes had left the field and lock Lukhan Salakaia-Loto also received a red card in the dying moments.
With these two key departures, Saints had no chance of competing with the reigning champions so they fell to their fourth defeat in the competition, which left them rooted to the bottom of Pool B with just a single point.
Quentin Lespiaucq-Brettes scored two tries for La Rochelle, Levani Botia, Ulupano Seuteni and Gregory Alldritt the others with Antoine Hastoy kicking three conversions.
Tom James scored a try for Northampton with Fin Smith adding two penalties and a conversion.
Northampton had the first chance for points with Smith’s 50-metre penalty attempt sailing wide but the outside half soon made amends with a 25=metre kick to give his side a 12th-minute lead.
Saints continued to have the better of the opening quarter but try-scoring opportunities were at a premium. The nearest opportunity came when a kick and chase from George Furbank saw him nail Dillyn Leyds close to the opposition line but the visitors regrouped to clear the danger.
The first 20 minutes was punctuated by penalties, nine in all, so it was no surprise that Smith’s penalty was the only score during that period.
It was against the run of play when the French side scored the first try. An excellent touch-finder from Antoine Hastoy secured a platform in the home 22 from where La Rochelle went through the phases before Botia forced his way over.
Hastoy converted before the home side suffered another setback when Lawes hobbled off to be replaced by Alex Coles.
The visitors also picked up an injury blow when Leyds was forced to exit the field to fail an HIA, with Dingwall sent off for the high challenge on him to leave Saints trailing 7-3 at the interval.
Five minutes after the restart, Smith kicked a second penalty but La Rochelle emphasised their forward power when replacement hooker Lespiaucq-Brettes finished off a driving line-out.
Saints looked in trouble but when the visitors’ scrum-half Tawera Kerr-Barlow was sin-binned for a deliberate offside they immediately capitalised when replacement James finished off a neat round of passing.
However the French side quickly responded with two tries in quick succession with both Alldritt and Lespiaucq-Brettes crashing over from close range.
Northampton’s race was now run and a break from Jules Favre created the visitors’ fifth try for Seuteni which ensured a home tie for La Rochelle in the next round of the competition.
To complete Saints’ woe, Salakaia-Loto was sent off in the last minute for leading with his forearm.
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Latest Comments
Turn it up. Give me your john A game would ya!
Go to commentsI didn't really get the should tone from it, but maybe because I was just reading it as my own thoughts.
What I read it as was examples of how they played well enough in every game to be able to win it.
Yeah I dunno if Ben wouldn't see it that way (someone else would for sure need to point it out to him though), I'm more in the Ben not appreciating that those close losses werent one off scenarios camp. Sure you can look at dubious decisions causing them to have to play with 14 or 13 men at the death as viable reasons but even in the games they won without such difficulties they made a real struggle of it (compared to how good some of their first half play was). This kind of article where you trying to point out the 3 losses really would most likely have been wins only really makes sense/works when your other performances make those 3 games (or endings) stand out.
There might have been a sentence here and there to ensure some good comment numbers but when he's signing off the article by saying things like ..
and..
I don't really see it. Always making sure people are upto date with the SH standing/perspective! NZ went through some tough times with so many different perspectives and reasons why, but then it was.. amusing how.. behind everyone was once they turned a corner. More of these 'unfortunate' results returned against SA and France at the start of the RWC which made it extra tasty to catch other teams out when they did bring it. So that created some 'conscious' perspective that I just kept going and sharing re thoughts on similar predicaments of other teams, I had been really confident that Wallabies displays vs NZ were real, that the Argentines can backup their thing against Aus and SA (and so obviously the rest), and current one is that England are actually consistent and improving with their attack (which everyone should get onboard with), and I'm expecting a more dominant display against Japan (even though they should have more of their experienced internationals for this one) that highlights further growth from July. 👍
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