Saints preserve missionary zeal

RUGBY UNION Owen Slot reports on the big club determined to rejoin the elite

WHEN a season of disappointment reached its nadir last April and Northampton's relegation was confirmed, the team's reaction was somewhat surprising. The club coach, carrying a side now destined for Courage League Two, interrupted its passage south from West Hartlepool and unloaded its cargo at a pub outside Leeds for a night out. And there was little brooding and pouting over the pints before 12.15am when at last the coach pulled away again. "No, we had a great night," said Ian McGeechan, the club's director of rugby. "The atmosphere was really very good."

Neither was it downbeat a few days later at Franklins Gardens when McGeechan called the last team meeting of the season. "We won four of our last six games," he said, "so we had got success. I just mapped out for them what we needed to do to take it a stage further." It was then that Tim Rodber, the captain, announced his expectations for the future, and they were rather more specific: they had to win all 18 league games in the coming season, they had to win them all with a 30-point margin, and they had to reach the Pilkington Cup final.

"We could cruise through this year," Rodber said last week. "But that's not what we want to do; that way we won't learn anything. It's important that we make everyone stand up and pay attention." And already they are. Last Saturday, Northampton opened their league account at London Irish and won 65-32, and to emphasise the point, they took Moseley apart yesterday, 50-7, scoring eight tries in the process.

These results are the first in what the Saints see as something of a mission. The campaign's initial success, though, was won months ago when Rodber and the other internationals, Martin Bayfield and Ian Hunter, decided not to leave. Relegation could have sparked the break-up of the squad but the team has actually arrived in League Two considerably strengthened. Gregor Townsend, the Scottish international, and Jonathan Bell, the Irish international, two of the best young centres in the world, have joined and provide the club with arguably the best midfield in the country. Any second thoughts they experienced because of demotion were overcome by the team's decision to stay together. "It showed me that it wasn't just knee-deep here," Bell said. "In fact I was probably even more impressed than first off."

What had attracted him initially, he said, were the facilities, the coaching, the way the players are looked after - a set-up far in advance of what he was used to at his Irish club, Ballymena. And then there was McGeechan. "What he says doesn't go in one ear and out the other," Bell said. "His word is gospel."

McGeechan arrived at Northampton 11 months ago, five matches into last season's losing streak. This time round, when the players arrived for pre-season training on 4 July - almost a month earlier than in former years - they were greeted with a fitness schedule similar to the one McGeechan thrust on his Scotland sides, which emphasised pace rather than endurance, and a wider, more entertaining game plan which, in their improved condition, they would be able to incorporate.

When the internationals started training a few weeks later (as had been intended after the World Cup), they were impressed. As Rodber remarked to McGeechan, everyone was around the ball the whole time, no one was looking for the easy way out. "The whole atmosphere had changed," Rodber said. "We've been through a year of losing and it was clear that everyone had been away and done a lot of soul-searching."

What has remained the same, though, is the impression that Northampton are not a League Two side. "We're a First Division club and we've got to play like one," McGeechan said. "I would say we were the fifth best side last season," Rodber said, listing Leicester, Bath, Wasps and Sale ahead. "We need to keep that mental attitude because we know we are better than where we are."

Eventually came the chance to prove it and first up were Leicester, the champions, in a pre- season friendly two weeks ago. The Saints were defeated but a stunning 10-minute finishing burst proved the worth of that Scottish fitness programme and they closed with a try from 80 metres out. Promising, but the mission really got under way last Saturday at London Irish. They were soon 15- 6 down. "That was like a signal for us," McGeechan said. "We tightened it, upped the pace and in the next 10 minutes we pulled three tries back."

Six more followed. That made it one win up, and they went two up yesterday against Moseley. Sixteen to go.