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Northampton director of rugby Phil Dowson admitted to having some sympathy for Gloucester after the league leaders’ record-breaking 90-0 victory secured a home semi-final in the Gallagher Premiership.
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Ninth-placed Gloucester showed where their priorities lie by making 12 changes to the team who defeated Benetton in the semi-finals of the European Challenge Cup last week, and their makeshift line-up was torn to shreds.
Northampton ran in 14 tries to rack up their biggest Premiership win, the highest points total by a home team in the competition’s history and its second-widest margin of victory.
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Dowson said: “I know (Gloucester head coach) George Skivington pretty well – I obviously worked with him during the Six Nations – and there’s clearly different priorities going on.
“We had to do something today in order to guarantee a home semi, George is building towards a European final and also next season, so there were different motivating factors today.
“It’s never nice to be on the end of a 90-0 humping but, at the same time, we had a job to do.
“I wanted to push the players to stay really focused on what that was and not get too distracted by the scoreline.
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“So you’ve got to take that and we’ve all been there. We’ve all been on the end of those sort of games and you find out a lot about yourself and a lot about your team.
“I’m sure George, Dom Waldouck and all those good lads at Gloucester will take that on moving forward.”
Ollie Sleightholme scored a hat-trick for Northampton, whose other tries came from George Furbank, Fraser Dingwall, Curtis Langdon (2), Alex Mitchell, Alex Waller, Sam Matavesi (2), Emmanuel Iyogun, Alex Moon and Tom James.
Their extraordinary scoreline is only surpassed in the Premiership by Richmond’s 106-12 rout of Bedford in May 1999.
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Gloucester head coach Skivington said: “I thought there might be a heavy scoreline today when I saw the team they selected.
“I knew momentum would go against us at some point and it would be hard to recover, but that was extremely painful.
“I thought Saints were absolutely ruthless. I thought they were brilliant today and our young lads just couldn’t find traction, couldn’t find their way out of it, couldn’t get anything going in the game.
“And Saints’ defence, whenever we did get a little bit of momentum, turned the ball over and took it off us.
“It was always going to be a tough day but we came with the approach we came with. I can’t moan too much about it, albeit we won’t be brushing this off either.
“I thought there were some lads who really did show what they could do and there were a few who showed they’re well off the pace in the Premiership.”
