Category: Premiership Rugby

With Saints riding high, back-rower explains how being recognised in the street makes it different from Newcastle

To see what Callum Chick brings to any side he plays in, watch the 55th minute of Northampton’s electrifying win at the Rec last Saturday. Henry Arundell is speeding down the Bath right, nearly into Saints’ 22, after a defensive error by Henry Pollock. A try for the champions looks a certainty before the flanker desperately dives at Arundell and dislodges the ball from his grasp.

A dextrous pick-up by George Hendy allows him to sprint downfield before setting up Pollock to dive over – 13 seconds after Arundell was threatening at the other end.

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England scrum-half returned from injury to a side on the crest of a wave and will hope to catch Steve Borthwick’s eye

Harry Randall and Bristol enter the new year with high hopes. The scrum-half has returned to fitness ahead of schedule after hamstring surgery and marked his 150th Bears appearance in the win against Newcastle last Saturday.

Pat Lam’s side approach the Prem encounter with Sale at Ashton Gate on Friday after five straight victories, sitting fourth in the table, their attractive style having clicked. A fresh assault on the playoffs looks likely.

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• Wales back returned to UK without playing NFL game

• Pat Lam: ‘It’s made him a more rounded player’

The Bristol director of rugby, Pat Lam, has said Louis Rees-Zammit’s recent NFL tilt made him a stronger and more dangerous player.

The Wales back joined the NFL’s international pathway programme in January 2024, and was signed by the Kansas City Chiefs before a spell at the Jacksonville Jaguars. He returned to rugby after 18 months without playing an NFL match, signing for Bristol in July. Lam said that since signing for the Bears, the 24-year-old has been working to reach match fitness, but that his increased power has made it harder for opponents to stop him.

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• Bath 21-41 Northampton

• Visitors run in six tries at Rec to leapfrog rivals in table

The champions have been mugged at home by the team they deposed. Well, not quite the team. Northampton rung the changes for this match, but the understudies proved the stars of the show to terrorise their hosts. Six tries, a hat-trick for Tommy Freeman and the lead, no less, of the Prem for good measure.

The bookies gave Northampton a 20-point head start for this one. In the end it was Bath who needed it. Bath were at full strength, the Saints some way short of it, but this will surely prove one of the performances of the season.

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• Sharks seventh in Prem heading into Harlequins match

• Director of rugby Sanderson: ‘It wasn’t a crisis meeting’

Alex Sanderson has said an “honest” meeting of Sale’s owners, players and coaches this week has set their intention for the Boxing Day encounter with Harlequins and beyond.

The Sharks are seventh in the Prem table, with two wins from seven, and were soundly beaten by Northampton at Franklin’s Gardens last Saturday. Their most recent Prem victory came against Newcastle on 10 October, and the director of rugby knows they need to start winning to have any chance of reaching the playoffs for a fourth straight season.

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• 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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