Phil Dowson labelled Northampton Saints’ performance in their 0-33 home Gallagher Premiership loss to Leicester Tigers as ‘unacceptable’.
The visitors to a sold-out cinch Stadium at Franklin’s Gardens on Friday night scored three tries in the first half and one in the second on their way to securing maximum points in the East Midlands Derby.
“There’s obviously going to be some pretty tough lessons for Sam (Vesty) and I, and the rest of the coaching group to wear and get better at – and we’ll do that,” said Saints’ Director of Rugby.
“The only option is to take that on the chin, front it, and say that it was unacceptable.
“There were elements of being thrown together this week, that’s true, but we knew that from a while ago.
“There’s going to be some tough lessons for us and the rest of the coaching team to wear and front it.”
Phil Dowson, Director of Rugby
Similarly to the reverse fixture at Mattioli Woods Welford Road in October 2024, Saints were hampered by inaccuracies and misfortune that saw numerous golden scoring opportunities go without any reward.
More than an hour elapsed between Tigers’ third and fourth tries, but the scoreboard pressure mounted with a hat-trick of Handre Pollard penalties.
Dowson added: “As a coaching group we always sit beforehand and ask what we expect from the evening, and we didn’t see that coming, which is one of the frightening things.
“We felt we were in a good space this week, had a good energy in training, but in the first half we were blown away.
“We coughed the ball up a lot, a lot of errors, a lot of turnovers, no field position, we looked like we were almost trying too hard, a bit scattergun, very stressed.
“We kept giving the ball away in the wrong areas of the pitch – there were three or four intercepts – and we couldn’t get the ball on the floor when it was loose, couldn’t get it in the air.
“Anything that was competitive, we came out on the wrong side.”
Phil Dowson, Director of Rugby
Saints now have six games of the Gallagher Premiership campaign remaining to climb up the table, starting with a Friday night trip to face Sale Sharks.
“We’ll continue to pick the absolute strongest group we can do,” said Dowson.
“We’ve got plenty of players in there coming back from injury, from internationals who haven’t got minutes under their belt, so we’ll be better for that next week.
“We’ve got Burger (Odendaal), Trev Davison, Curt Langdon, Alex Coles who haven’t played much and that was an element of this evening so we’ll continue to push that group forward and pick the team that we think gives us the best chance of a good performance.”
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