Four talking points as Northampton hold off a late Exeter rally

It’s still early days in the new 2024/25 Gallagher Premiership to suggest how the title race will ultimately play out, but an especially interesting week visiting old rivals Saracens awaits Rob Baxter’s Exeter now that they have chalked up a second successive league loss with their 24-30 defeat at Northampton.

It was 2021/22 when the Chiefs last went LL in the opening two rounds of the English season, losing at Leicester and then at home to Northampton, the same two teams they have so far lost to this term.

They were third-round winners three years ago, their seasoned side picking off Sale away, but breaking this latest losing run with a Sunday service in London will be a considerably tall order for the now less experienced Baxter squad that only has Newcastle below them on the table.

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RugbyPass was at cinch Stadium @ Franklin’s Gardens for Saturday’s six-try clash of the clubs with the reimagined crests. It didn’t remotely promise a tight finish as Northampton were 30-10 clear on the hour and looking comfortable. Too comfortable it turned out to be.

Two late converted Immanuel Feyi-Waboso tries heralded a nervous conclusion where impressive host out-half Fin Smith was relieved to boot the ball into the stand with the margin cut to six points.

Gallagher Premiership

P

W

L

D

PF

PA

PD

BP T

BP-7

BP

Total

1

Saracens

2

2

0

0

10

2

Bristol

2

1

1

0

7

3

Harlequins

2

1

1

0

6

4

Gloucester

2

1

1

0

6

5

Bath

1

1

0

0

5

6

Leicester

1

1

0

0

4

7

Northampton

2

1

1

0

4

8

Sale

2

1

1

0

4

9

Exeter Chiefs

2

0

2

0

2

10

Newcastle

2

0

2

0

0

That confirmed the defending champions had secured a redemptive win following last weekend’s setback at Bath, the team they beat in last season’s final 16 weeks ago. Here are the RugbyPass talking points:

Baxter’s half-full glass
It’s intriguing how a couple of late scores can lighten the mood. Exeter looked a very well-beaten docket when Smith scooped over his 60th-minute drop goal to leave a 20-point margin between the teams. The odds at that stage were for Northampton to press on and register a four-try bonus point, but that didn’t materialise.

Instead, the Chiefs finally twice made something stick in the opposition 22 and the anticipated 5-0 match points outcome became a 4-1 divvy-up that so pleased Baxter he would have been well within his rights to tuck into the leftover chocolate cake on the table beside him and celebrate at his post-game media briefing.

Exeter were encouragingly credited with a whopping 14 visits to Saints’ 22, compared to just eight for the hosts, but they had a frustrating ability to repeatedly mess things up until that late hurrah. They certainly aren’t the force of old, annual title challengers who knew the business of winning with their eyes closed.

Rather than rant and rave over current vulnerabilities, Baxter insisted his young outfit still had plenty of time on its side to come very good. Let’s hear him out: “We’re still a high error team at the minute. That’s the reality, that’s what is our bugbear.

“Things like not holding the ball in contact, getting stripped, balls bobbling loose, just getting pulled away. The odd silly penalty. Even at the end, we kicked the ball straight off the field when we had a chance to get an exit and keep pressure on the opposition…

“People used to call us a machine in the past because we didn’t use to get those things wrong. We’re getting them wrong now so we have to find the power of the machine again.

“The one thing I know is when you have been through this process a couple of times like I have with a couple of groups of players, you do know it will get there eventually. I just have to be more boneheaded than the players, be more boneheaded on repeating the stuff that needs to be repeated until they actually understand it keeps you so safe and it keeps you so strong that eventually you just start winning games like today.

“That might be the spark that they need!”

Exeter Chiefs are on the board at Northampton ?#GallagherPrem | #NORvEXE pic.twitter.com/gVlYtEBRTK

— Rugby on TNT Sports (@rugbyontnt) September 28, 2024

“We have ended up six points off having done some pretty odd things, made quite a lot of mistakes but we have created enough situations and the pressure of the game changes, everything flows and you can score quickly.

“I’m delighted for the players because they have had a bit of a tough look at themselves but a losing bonus point away from home is par. A lot of teams don’t pick up losing bonus points here. A good par performance, picked up a bonus point.

“If we had a win last week (they were beaten in the last minute by Leicester) we would be sitting here with five or six points. Most teams in this competition would take that – and we have been very close to achieving that over two weeks so overall we are doing okay.”

Mitchell wait goes on
It was at last Tuesday’s media briefing when Phil Dowson volunteered that Alex Mitchell, his unavailable No9, would be seeing a specialist about the neck issue picked up at training that has sidelined him from the opening rounds of the league.

Steve Borthwick’s first-choice England scrum-half was originally set to play against Bedford in Saints’ final pre-season outing on September 13. He had been named in the starting team but was a no-show come kick-off and has since missed Northampton’s two Premiership matches.

Dowson claimed post-Exeter there was no firm indication good or bad regarding the Mitchell investigation. “He saw the specialist on Thursday and so we are hoping to get a bit more clarity on that in the next week or so,” he said.

Reading between the lines, we definitely won’t be seeing him versus Harlequins next Friday night given the short turnaround, and the fear must be that something serious has happened and Mitchell unfortunately might not be ready for the start of England’s Autumn Nations Series at home to New Zealand on November 2. That would be a real pity.

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Saints’ Quins-like ambition
Northampton were pleased with how their defence stood up to scrutiny until their late leakage. According to the RugbyPass match centre, just 19 of their 187 tackles were missed, a completion rate of 91 per cent. The Exeter rearguard were less busy, making 112 tackles. Twenty were missed, leaving them with an 85 per cent success.

Dowson insisted there were still a few things for Saints to defensively fix, including the yellow carded high shot from Rory Hutchinson that left them a man down for the final part of the match, but what the director of rugby wants to achieve in the long run is take a leaf out of the Harlequins playbook and go after an increased number of breakdown turnovers to lessen the defensive load over an entire match.

“One of the things we looked at in reviewing last season was we were very high in terms of time in defence and we did some really good defending but that drains people from an energy point of view and it also puts you under pressure.

“And so we wanted to be in a situation where we gave license to people to make decisions around the breakdown and loosen that off a little bit. Of course you want to do that without giving too many penalties away.

“We looked at Quins who have a very, very high number of turnovers and a very low number of penalties given away at the breakdown, so it can be done and that is something we have talked about in terms of when you are looking to try and get on the ball, the different ways of getting the ball back and encouraging players to make those decisions in training.”

THE CHAMPIONS HOLD ON!

Despite some late pressure from the Chiefs, @SaintsRugby take their first win of the season ?#GallagherPrem | #NORvEXE pic.twitter.com/dPbgB7HmNk

— Rugby on TNT Sports (@rugbyontnt) September 28, 2024

Chiefs’ bomb squad
Curious how Baxter attempted a South African bomb squad-type tactic to energise Exeter, whipping off Scott Sio, Dan Frost and Ehren Painter at the interval and replacing this starting front row with Will Goodrick-Clarke, Jack Yeandle and Marcus Street.

The director of rugby insisted it wasn’t a case of administrating tough love following some first-half exasperation. “No, we are going to rotate the front row pretty regularly anyway,” he explained. “That’s a separate call just based on minutes and keeping them fresh and having an impact with other players.”

The previous weekend, Painter played only the first half as well with Josh Iosefa-Scott coming on for the entire second half. It was six minutes after that break versus Leicester when Goodrick-Clarke and Yeandle were introduced for Sio and Frost.

Another forward whose minutes have also been restricted is lock Rusiate Tuima. He had just 49 minutes at Franklin’s, just three more than at Sandy Park in round one.