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Rory Hutchinson reveals the reason why he has signed a contract extension at Northampton
By Online Editors
Northampton Saints have announced that Scotland international Rory Hutchinson has extended his contract at Franklin’s Gardens.
The 23-year-old, who came through the Saints academy system, has made 46 appearances to date for the club, scoring 13 tries.
Hutchinson’s form during the second half of the 2018/19 campaign saw him named Saints’ breakthrough player for the season.
He also collected club and Premiership player of the month awards and was rewarded with a maiden call-up into the Scotland team before the World Cup, making his first international start by scoring twice in a warm-up Test against Georgia.
“I feel like I have been living out my dream over the last six months or so, playing for Northampton Saints and making my international debut for Scotland,” he said.
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“Franklin’s Gardens is a fantastic place to play rugby; I trust in Chris Boyd and what he and all the coaches here are doing at the club, so I’ve no doubt that this is the best place for me to develop even further and win more silverware in the coming years.
“Ever since I first pulled on the jersey, I was desperate to win trophies with Saints and that ambition definitely still burns brightly. There are some seriously gifted players around me in Northampton, and I’m really confident together we can achieve a lot over the coming years.”
Born in Cambridge, Hutchinson joined Saints academy from Shelford RFC before breaking into the first-team squad during the 2016/17 season. His try against Exeter Chiefs on his first club start won Northampton’s try of the season award.
Three years later, he became the 1,104th player to represent Scotland when he made his Test debut off the bench against France in August. “Rory is a high-skill player who has made a significant step up in his performances over the last 12 months,” said Saints’ director of rugby Chris Boyd.
“Right from when I arrived in Northampton, I was impressed with his skill set, willingness to try new things and the effort he makes to improve his all-round game.
“He has seen that pay off with awards and a call-up to play for Scotland this summer, all of which was richly deserved, but crucially he has not taken his foot off the accelerator and has picked up where he left off so far this season in trying to fulfil his huge potential.
“I’ve no doubt Rory will be an important player for us over the coming seasons, and our supporters love watching him play, so we’re thrilled to see him sign on again.”
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Latest Comments
Like I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.
Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.
So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).
You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.
I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?
Go to commentsYou always get idiots who go overboard. What else is new? I ignore them. Why bother?
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