Langdon relishing return to Europe after ‘hurt’ of home loss

Northampton Saints hooker Curtis Langdon is calling on his teammates to use the ‘hurt’ of losing their long-held winning record on home soil to get their European campaign off to a flying start this weekend.

The men in Black, Green and Gold were beaten at cinch Stadium at Franklin’s Gardens on Saturday by Gloucester – their first competitive defeat in Northampton for 14 months.

The Cherry and Whites pulled away in the opening 40 minutes, with Santi Carreras crossing twice either side of Zach Mercer’s score. Skipper George Furbank’s solo effort was all Saints – who lost fly-half Fin Smith early on to an eye injury – could muster in response and they trailed 22-7 at the interval.

However Phil Dowson’s side rallied after half-time, piling the pressure on Gloucester for the vast majority of the remainder of the game. Juarno Augustus crashed over with 30 minutes remaining, but three more would-be scores were chalked off by the TMO, and Saints ultimately could not make their opportunities count to come back and win the Gallagher Premiership clash.

“We weren’t at the races first half, and then we were forced to play catch-up in the second 40,” admitted Langdon, who played all 80 minutes in the front row for Northampton.

“To give ourselves some credit, the game was there for us to win in the second half – we put ourselves in a position to turn it around, but we had made it really hard for ourselves by not turning up from the very first minute of the game, so we’re really disappointed overall with the result.

“I don’t think any lack of cohesion was due to internationals going out and then coming back into our camp over the last few weeks. That’s certainly not an excuse for us – we’ve just got to use this as a massive wake-up call.

“But when you’re chasing the game a little, with the scoreboard pressure on you, things happen and we couldn’t take some of the opportunities we created.”

One bright spark for Saints was the return of Alex Mitchell, who entered the action early in the second half to make his first appearance of the 2024/25 season, having recovered from a troublesome neck injury.

The England scrum-half looked lively throughout his cameo and injected some pace at the right time for Northampton, and Langdon believes his return lifted the whole squad.

He said: “It was definitely really good to see him back in action. It’s been a difficult time for Mitch, picking up this injury and having some uncertainty on how long it would take to heal.

“That always causes frustration for the player involved, but when he came on against Gloucester it gave us a big boost – and he was clearly really excited to be back out there.

Up next for Saints is the return of the Investec Champions Cup competition, with the men in Black, Green and Gold hosting Castres Olympique (Saturday 7 December, kick-off: 3.15pm) and then travelling to Pretoria to lock horns with the Bulls the following weekend.

After a semi-final appearance in last season’s campaign – the Club’s best run in Europe’s elite competition since 2011 – Langdon is hoping for more of the same in 2024/25 and urged his Northampton teammates to respond in style next weekend.

He added: “It really hurts us losing at home, but we’ve now got two big matches in Europe ahead of us and we need to build some momentum back up again. We want to go far in Europe again, as we did last year, so these are two big weeks for us.

“We’ll learn the lessons we need to from this, look at where we weren’t good enough against Gloucester, and put it right for the weeks ahead of us.

“We just want to build on last year’s run in the Champions Cup again this season. Castres will come here with a big French pack, and we want to start making some great memories together again in this competition as we did last time.

“Physically we weren’t there from the start against Gloucester, so against a French side it will be a big test for us to put that right.”