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F. Smith (7'), O. Sleightholme (16', 60', 63'), T. Freeman (28', 78'), F. Dingwall (36'), J. Pater (45'), J. Kemeny (51'), A. Mitchell (56'), A. Coles (68')
Tries
T. Carr-Smith (10'), C. Griffin (13'), A. Griffin (30'), A. Green (32', 42'), S. Carreras (48'), J. Bayliss (65')
F. Smith (17', 28', 37', 46', 57', 64', 68', 79')
Conversions
F. Russell (11', 14', 33', 43', 66')
Penalties
F. Russell (40')
Another meeting of Northampton Saints and Bath Rugby, another game that blew apart. With trusted post-match reports still thin on the ground, the one thing you can say with confidence is this: Saints didn’t need much ball to shred Bath, and Bath couldn’t handle Saints’ strike power when the field opened. It fits the pattern at Franklin’s Gardens, but the scale of it will sting Bath.
This isn’t the night for microscopic tactical claims before the official tapes and packs land, yet the numbers we do have draw a very clear outline. Saints lived off 43% possession and still racked up 26 clean breaks. Bath missed 39 tackles and played 20 minutes with 14 men. That’s the game right there: Bath had the ball, Saints had the cutting edge.
CARRIES
CLEAN BREAKS
TACKLE
TACKLES MISSED
TURNOVERS WON
PENALTIES CONCEDED
YELLOW CARDS
POSSESSION
SCRUMS
LINEOUTS
The turn came fast and brutally. When Santiago Carreras finished to push Bath out to 41–33 on 48 minutes, the visitors looked in charge of the tempo. In the next quarter of an hour, Saints took the whole thing away: a hard, straight finish from Josh Kemeny, a snipe from Alex Mitchell, and a back-to-back double for Ollie Sleightholme racing into the space Bath kept leaving on the edge. Ollie Lawrence’s yellow card arrived in the middle of that surge and only deepened the hole. By the time Tommy Freeman added the late gloss, the contest had long since flipped from Bath’s scoreboard control to Saints’ scoreboard cruelty.
What did Saints do well? They were ice-cold in the red zone and ruthless off turnover ball. Fin Smith ran the rack with 21 points, a try and eight conversions, but more to the point he and Mitchell found width early and often. Rory Hutchinson supplied two clean, early touches for tries, the lineout was spotless (7/7) and the 6–2 bench split paid off once the game turned attritional – fresh tightheads and back-five bodies kept the gain line moving while Bath tired. There were heavy shifts too: Alex Coles made 17 tackles and a line-busting try, Curtis Langdon added 17 tackles of his own, and Sleightholme’s hat-trick owed as much to support lines as to raw pace.
There are obvious caveats for the champions. They shipped seven tries and were second best at scrum time (67% on their own feed to Bath’s 89%). Bath opened them up repeatedly off first phase – Tom Carr-Smith had a try and three assists – and Saints were trailing 41–33 inside the final half hour. This was a clinic in finishing, not a claim that all their systems are humming.
Bath will feel the margin is ugly for how often they had Saints chasing shadows. They had 57% of the ball, their scrum functioned, and they found strike runners: Arthur Green grabbed a brace, Carreras chimed in from the back, and Finn Russell kept the board ticking with five conversions and a penalty. But the defensive picture is the story. Miss 39 tackles and take two yellows, and no amount of invention will save you against this attack. Russell’s six missed tackles tell you where Saints were happy to play; the edges and 10–12 channel leaked, the chase and fold were slow, and the sin-bin for Lawrence ended any realistic chase.
Does 23 points flatter Saints? A bit, in the sense Bath led by eight with half an hour left and scored seven tries. But the gap reflects what actually mattered: once the game broke, Saints repeatedly turned half-chances into seven pointers while Bath repeatedly turned long possessions into turnover ball and scramble defence. That’s not cosmetic; that’s decisive.
So the takeaways, pending the full review. Saints can still rack up points in bunches without dictating possession, which is a luxury most sides don’t have. They’ll still want a cleaner scrum and tighter goal-line D before the derby week. Bath, quick starters this season, were reminded that pace with the ball doesn’t count for much if the tackle technique, spacing and discipline desert them when fatigue bites. Fix the edge defence and the card count, and their attack will win them plenty. Leave them as they were here, and teams like Saints will keep finding daylight where there shouldn’t be any.
