Saints keeping their spirits up

AS A tactic to impress the Twickenham hierarchy, sending your entire team out to get drunk together on Sunday night is an unusual one, even for Jim Mallinder.

Yet Northampton Saints’ director of rugby, who makes no secret of his desire to become England’s head coach at some point in the future, has carte blanche to do whatever he likes at Franklin’s Gardens.

The night out in question came late last month after Saints had beaten Gloucester to lift the LV Cup in what could be the first leg of a treble campaign, but with a huge Guinness Premiership clash against Wasps just six days away, it was still a surprise Mallinder let his players off the leash.

Yet that human touch shows exactly why Mallinder is destined for the very top, according to Phil Dowson, the back row forward who was skipper as Saints claimed their first trophy of the season. In tomorrow’s Heineken Cup quarter-final at Thomond Park, Munster will be coming up against a team that embodies his personality.

“Jim is a young guy who played in the professional era, so he knows that the athletic side of it can be turgid at times and you need a release,” explains Dowson, who has been superb since his move from Newcastle last summer. “He knew that we won a final, so we were going to have a good time. That in turn will bring us together as well.

“Jim looks after the bigger picture and the overview of where we are going as a team, while Dorian West and Paul Grayson (Mallinder’s chief lieutenants) cover the technical side. They are very demanding and have a high set of standards. We spend a lot of time watching videos and if you aren’t doing your job you have to explain to everyone else why not. They give you specific tasks – Dorian, for example, will ask me to watch Munster’s line-outs and present to the rest of the squad. My computer skills have definitely improved since I’ve been here!”

It is Dowson’s improvement in other technical areas that have really caught the eye, though. The former Falcon was unfortunate in the extreme to miss out on selection for the Six Nations, with the 28-year-old’s impetus and off-loading ability setting the platform for the team’s other young dynamos, such as Ben Foden and Chris Ashton, to break the gainline at will.

“That’s how we enjoy playing, he explains. “We attack people and see on the hoof where the frailties and defensive weaknesses are, though when you’re playing a side like Munster there aren’t that many of them. So when an opportunity comes you have to make sure you take advantage.

“We know we will have to play exceptionally well. But that’s our philosophy, where Jim will say: ‘Show what you’ve got and see what happens’.

“That was what we did when we beat Munster 31-27 at Franklin’s Gardens in October. We were quite a new team coming together, and it was great to get such a big scalp. We realised we had the ability to play a game that would beat some very good sides.

“We said at the start of the year we wanted to play in big games with lots at stake. Going to Thomond Park is exactly what we had in mind. That pride in the jersey and that Munster ethos is something we can embrace here, and we have started to already. Northampton is a club that we want people to buy into as players. We believe in each other and have started to lay those foundations.”

Yet Dowson knows that if Saints win at Thomond tomorrow then it could lead to Mallinder edging one step closer to Twickenham and England.