Northampton Saints’ high-scoring victory over Bristol Bears served as strong preparation for this weekend’s Investec Champions Cup semi-final against Leinster.
That is the view of director of rugby Phil Dowson after a seven-try 48-31 success over the visitors to cinch Stadium at Franklin’s Gardens, stretching Saints’ winning run to four games heading into their last-four showdown in Dublin this Saturday.
“There’s elements of Bristol’s attack that look a lot like Leinster,” said Dowson. “Leinster are very, very talented at getting the ball away in contact, they are very good at taking short sides, they’re dangerous around the fringes, so that gives us an idea.
“But every game is an opportunity to work on our performance and work out how we can be better, and that will throw loads of things up as a coaching group and as players so we can be better going forward.”
After falling behind to an early Bristol try, the men in Black, Green and Gold built a 29-point lead by the game’s hour mark.
Tommy Freeman’s brace took his remarkable run of scoring to 12 tries in nine games for club and country. Joining him in crossing the line was Juarno Augustus, Curtis Langdon, Emmanuel Iyogun, Henry Pollock and Alex Mitchell – before Bristol ended strongly with three tries in the final quarter to rescue a point from the fixture.
“The way we played in the middle 50 minutes of the match was excellent.”
Director of Rugby, Phil Dowson
“We started a bit shakily and we finished in the same vein with lots of changes and going down to 14, but for the most part I thought we executed what we were trying to do very well in attack and defence.”
The man-of-the-match award went to scrum-half Mitchell, who brought the sold-out cinch Stadium to its feet on more than one occasion as he produced a sublime performance of attacking rugby.
“He’s unbelievable,” said Dowson. “He tells lies with the ball and he's quick enough to finish that try off.
“We saw (Jack) van Poortvliet here against us change the momentum of the game, and we got that touch from Alex Mitchell to get us back on the front foot.”
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