NORTHAMPTON SAINTS VS EXETER CHIEFS

NL1: Saturday, 22^nd March 2008. 3pm

FRANKLIN’S GARDENS

MATCH PREVIEW

LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLE!

Are you excited? I am.

The Saints have cut a swathe through this league and are only five bonus points short of a maximum. If this league (except for Saints) were as competitive as everyone likes to think, why on earth are the Saints not promoted already? Who has the temerity to still be in with a mathematical chance of still winning the league with only a month to go?

Surely to goodness, games will have been lost; bonus points will have been missed. To an extent, this is true but one team has lost only four games. Where would that sort of record put a team in the Guinness Premiership? Apart from that, this team has collected seventeen bonus points. Only once has it left a match empty-handed.

Exeter Chiefs is the team with this record. After months of hanging on to Saints’ coat-tails, Saturday is the day that decides whether the Chiefs lose touch with them altogether or start the rather tenuous process of reeling them in. By the standards of their season, the Chiefs head to Franklins Gardens with what might be called patchy away form. Two of their four league defeats have come in their last three away games – at Newbury and just across the county line at Bedford Blues.

The fixture list has given Exeter a rather tough run-in. Chiefs have to play the first and third teams away from home. Given that they are relying on Saints to slip up against everyone now, including Launceston at home, their hopes may be a trifle forlorn. The best thing about Saturday is that it is like a Cup Final. The crowd will be large (fewer than 1,000 tickets left), the crowd will be buzzing with anticipation but only Saints can really win it.

The actual Cup Final comes a couple of weeks later when the Chiefs will be doing their level best not to lose again; Cornish Pirates, Rotherham and Orrell have all seen off the Chiefs at Twickenham. As nightmares have a habit of recurring, Northampton Saints will be at Twickenham to greet Peter Drewett and his team that day, too.

In analysing how Chiefs have come to have such a good record you do not have to look further than the wings. Luff and Draininui are way out ahead of the league (with the exception of Saints, of course) in the try-scoring stakes. With 19 and 20 respectively, they are way out ahead of their team-mates, too. The next in the list is Blythe, a hooker. Danny Gray controls a game well and usually kicks his goals. Contributions from the rest of the back-line are paltry when you consider that the team has scored over 100 tries.

Having been in attendance at Sandy Park in November, I find these statistics slightly mystifying. In the preview for that game, Red Saint wrote perceptively about the Exeter pack’s fetish for pick and drive and the Fatialofa brothers’ penchant for crashing up through the centre. He was so accurate that I believe that he must have mastered time travel technology. So uni-dimensional was the play that 70 minutes of game time had elapsed before someone introduced a third pass into the attacking mix – only once, mind, they did not want to overdo it.

Much was made of the Chiefs dominance in the forwards in November’s game. In truth the Saints’ line-out was poor and completely outplayed. The same was true the following game against Nottingham. Were these were off-days exacerbated by a young hooker returning to the starting line-up and not throwing well? Or, was it the excellence of the unit against them? Was it a wake-up call to a team that had not appreciated the intensity of set-piece play in this league? Or, was it an inherently weak line-out system?

While Saints fans are becoming anxious about their chances it would probably be as well to remember that it was Saints not Exeter that scored directly from a 5-metre scrum. Similarly, it was Saints not Exeter that took ball from the top of the line-out and created a try in the centre from the first phase.

The wingers that have scored all those tries between them only saw the ball when Saints kicked it in their direction. In the whole game, neither of them received a single pass from another Exeter player. If only they had followed Sharky’s example. Draininui picked off a pass meant for Spencer and ran half the length of the field to score.

If all we get are the Saints forwards racking up their impressive tackle count (again) waiting patiently on-side for the inevitable knock-on, then the conclusion is foregone. If the brothers Fatialofa believe they can intimidate James Downey and Jon Clarke, Luff and Draininui had better bring their mittens at the weekend, it is going to be cold and lonely on those wings.

Given that Peter Drewett (Director of Rugby, Exeter Chiefs) is the author of a highly regarded coaching manual, Steps to Success, and that the Chiefs have managed to score tries against the rest of the league, we may yet live in hope that the game-plan to beat the Saints gets an airing at last.

The Exeter team for the match has been posted on the club’s web-site. As is his way, Jim Mallinder will publish a 24-man squad later in the week.

These teams will relish playing on the fine Franklins Gardens surface. It will be a relief to both sides after the water-logged affairs last week-end. Form says Saints by a handsome score. Something like 30 points to 15 would not be beyond imagination.

Such a result would cue party time for the home team and its supporters as it would clinch the National League One title. Saints would return to the Guinness Premiership in September.

If, as seems likely, Saints pass Leeds Carnegie travelling in the other direction, there will be a mighty scrap at the top of National League One next season. Exeter Chiefs seem to be the team best-placed to mount a serious challenge. Their ground could be developed to meet the capacity criterion; they are not reliant on players loaned from Premiership sides; they are an accomplished side with a solid record of progress at this level.

If Tony Rowe and his management team have not started already, this is the week that they start to plan for the Premiership in 2009.

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