Category: Premiership Rugby

• First-minute red card for challenge costs Saints dearly

• Gloucester off mark with victory against Harlequins

Northampton’s unbeaten start to the season came to a shuddering halt as they were blown away 46-12 by impressive Bristol at Ashton Gate. Saints lost Edoardo Todaro to a first-minute red card and it was downhill all the way after that as Bristol ran in six tries.

Scrum-half Kieran Marmion scored two and Tom Jordan, Kalaveti Ravouvou, Aidan Boshoff and Luka Ivanishvili also crossed, with Sam Worsley kicking five conversions and two penalties. JJ van der Mescht and Tom Litchfield scored Northampton’s tries, one of which Fin Smith converted.

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Saints’ director of rugby on being converted to coaching, his ‘bromance’ with Sam Vesty and why Henry Pollock is smarter than he seems

Northampton is not the most exotic destination on the planet, but there is plenty of romance and adventure in its rugby union team.

In a town famous for boot‑making you might expect kicking, as frequently and as far as possible, to be the Saints’ modus operandi. But under the director of rugby, Phil Dowson, the team in green, black and gold prefer to keep ball in hand. Despite representing a quintessentially English town, they display a panache synonymous with the greatest French exponents of champagne rugby.

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• Report says franchise model could save up to £1.9m a year

• ‘Smaller clubs are spending way above their means’

James Haskell, the former England international, has likened English rugby to “Thelma and Louise heading off a cliff” after an independent report found that Prem clubs made a combined loss of £34m last season.

The report by a leading UK corporate recovery and insolvency firm, Leonard Curtis, suggests the game should consider adopting a franchise model, which it says would help Prem clubs to save between £1.1m and 1.9m a year.

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• Bath 40-15 Bristol

• Bath keep up pressure on Saints at top

Bath do not lose often these days, never mind on successive league weekends. And with an injury-hit Bristol supposedly cast in the role of punchbags this fixture was widely viewed as a home banker. Sure enough the defending champions eventually pulled away but only at the final whistle could this feisty, incident-packed West Country derby be classed as wholly comfortable.

It was fractious and visceral enough at times to make next Saturday’s England game against Australia look like a quiet suburban church fete. The England management will be suitably relieved that Ellis Genge, Ollie Lawrence, Guy Pepper and others walked away largely intact but they will all report back to Bagshot feeling distinctly battered and bruised.

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Prem’s top two meet on Friday night, with Northampton aiming to slow down the Saracens wing’s hype train

Brian Clough famously said that if God had intended football to be played in the sky, he’d have put grass up there. Tactical trends in rugby are moving in the opposite direction though, and with Noah Caluori set to make his second Prem start, Northampton’s high-stakes meeting with Saracens on Friday night promises to be a battle in the skies.

Phil Dowson’s table-topping Saints, champions in 2023-24, are the only unbeaten team remaining after three wins and a draw. Second-placed Saracens are two points back, having scored a league-leading 168 points to Northampton’s second-best 138. Nine players involved in England’s training camp this week will start at Franklin’s Gardens.

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Fans of his old clubs have chance to show support for their former flanker after shock of his MND diagnosis

Emotions are bound to run high at Welford Road on Saturday, and not just because Bath are in town to renew one of the great rivalries in English rugby.

Not even because Leicester’s round-four date with the reigning champions is a repeat of last season’s final, a little over four months ago, when Johann van Graan’s side resisted a fierce Tigers fightback at Twickenham to claim their first league title in 29 years.

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Wing has a masters in finance but has England ambitions and takes inspiration from Manny Feyi-Waboso

In his quieter moments Paul Brown-Bampoe has a recurring daydream. A packed Twickenham international stage, with him playing on one wing for England and his Exeter teammate Manny Feyi-Waboso on the other. “Of course I’ve imagined that day,” he says, smiling broadly. If the double-barrelled whizz-kids continue their current form it might just happen sooner rather than later.

Admittedly it is early days in the new Prem season but something potentially thrilling is stirring out west. Feyi-Waboso, after an injury-curtailed year, is back fit and firing with five tries in his opening two league games. The top-drawer Wallaby Len Ikitau has arrived to link up with Henry Slade in the Chiefs midfield and also lurking with intent is the 23-year-old Brown-Bampoe, a serious athlete with numerous strings to his bow.

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Phil Dowson has Fin Smith, Henry Pollock, Alex Mitchell and Tommy Freeman available again and eager to make up for last season’s 33-0 defeat

It does not feel like a coincidence that the Prem’s first derby weekend of the season marks the return of most British & Irish Lions players and for Northampton it is a welcome boost indeed. Phil Dowson has Fin Smith, Henry Pollock, Alex Mitchell and Tommy Freeman back at his disposal as they seek to avenge last season’s 33-0 home drubbing at the hands of fierce rivals Leicester.

For Saturday’s game Dowson has selected Smith, Mitchell and Freeman to start while Pollock is named on the bench and across the league a number of other Lions return now that the mandatory rest period has ended. Marcus Smith starts for Harlequins against Saracens, who field Ben Earl from the start. Jamie George is on the bench but Maro Itoje is still considered “unavailable”. Bath are led by Finn Russell in their West Country encounter with Gloucester with Will Stuart also starting. Ellis Genge lines up for injury-hit Bristol against Exeter.

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• Bath 28-16 Sale

• Hosts made to work for win by stubborn Sharks side

Almost everything is going swimmingly for Bath. At long last their long-awaited stadium redevelopment looks likely to happen and, on the field, the champions are two from two after the first couple of weekends. With Finn Russell due back in action next week to pick up the fly-half baton, it is going to take a seriously good side to steal their crown.

On a wet and windy night in Somerset, even so, they were made to work extremely hard for it by a stubborn Sale team who stuck in the fight and refused to go away. It was only with three minutes left that Max Ojomoh slid in to score his side’s bonus-point try and maintain his squad’s perfect start to the campaign.

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• Most British & Irish Lions on mandatory 10-week break

• Chessum returns despite featuring in all three Tests

Leicester’s new club captain Ollie Chessum has been cleared to return to domestic action against Harlequins ahead of schedule this weekend. The majority of British & Irish Lions squad members are not being permitted to resume playing for their clubs until next week but the Tigers forward has been given special dispensation.

The 25-year-old was injured for a large chunk of last season and ended up starting only 16 games and featuring off the bench four times. Despite being involved in all three Lions Tests against the Wallabies, the player management load group overseeing the welfare of top players has allowed him to face Harlequins at Welford Road on Saturday.

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• Internationals must have 10 weeks off

• Lions not available until third round of Prem

Saracens’ Mark McCall is the latest Prem director of rugby to question player welfare regulations that he believes have left internationals undercooked for the season’s start.

Guidelines mandated by the Professional Rugby Board – established as part of the club-country agreement – dictate that England players who took part in summer tours of Argentina and the US have 10 weeks off. They were available for the first set of Prem games last weekend, but could not take part in the two rounds of Prem Cup matches before that.

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High-profile takeover has rejuvenated an ailing club, with the opportunity for Steve Diamond’s team to take flight and grow

Don’t mention the F-word. Such has been the pace of the Red Bull rebrand that one Newcastle official joked there would be spot fines for anyone who forgets it is no longer the Falcons giving them flight.

Energy drinks are in, feathered friends out, but the feelgood factor now coursing through the north-east promises more than just a dopamine hit. For the club, who only a few months ago were exploring a loan from their league rivals to stay afloat, and the revamped Prem, there is a feeling that the Red Bull revolution can be seminal.

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Season-opener between Sale and Gloucester promises to be a cracker in English rugby’s new frontier

Th ne PREM seas sta o Thursd nigh wi Sal Shar hosti Glouce befo Harleq enterta Bat an Newcas Re Bul fac Sarac on Frid.

That is a sentence, as uneasy on the eye as it may be, of which you can just about make sense. Much like the Premiership’s decision to lose a few letters as part of its rebrand.

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Defending champions Bath are favourites to retain their title but Saracens will be boosted by Owen Farrell’s return

• The Breakdown: Prem rebrand aims to turn heads

There have been six different title winners in as many seasons but the defending champions are favourites to buck that trend. In Johan van Graan Bath have a relentlessly process-driven coach, not someone who would allow an ounce of complacency to creep in, and they have Ollie Lawrence and Jaco Coetzee back for the start of the season after long-term injuries.

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English top flight’s push to attract a younger audience is accelerating and relegation may soon be a thing of the past

Times are changing so rapidly in rugby that even the competition names now have go-faster stripes. Farewell to the familiar old Premiership and welcome, kicking off on a Thursday this year, to the Gallagher Prem. Or, strictly speaking, PREM. Who needs boring extra lower-case syllables or superfluous vowels in 2025 anyway?

Even the league’s updated logo is now bright orange to denote “intensity” and the mission to woo new fans – the younger the better – is accelerating by the week. Ask Rob Calder, Prem Rugby’s suitably bearded head of growth, what he thinks, for example, about the traditional rhythm of promotion and relegation and he does not hold back. “There’s a Victorian interest in promotion and relegation but actually that’s existential for a lot of clubs.” Sorry, are you suggesting the meritocratic English club pyramid is a Victorian concept? “Yeah. I think it’s old school. If you want the sport to grow you need to grow the conditions for ambition and investment.”

This is an extract taken from our weekly rugby union email, the Breakdown. To sign up, just visit this page and follow the instructions.

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