Gavan Casey

REFLECTING ON HIS side’s Champions Cup semi-final against Leinster 12 months ago, Northampton director of rugby Phil Dowson recalls how much it meant to Saints to become the first English club to play at an Irish stadium of such “cultural heritage” and “historical relevance”.

Dowson maintains that Northampton’s narrow defeat at GAA Headquarters helped his squad to write their way into their club’s personal lore, too. Having managed the occasion to a sufficient extent that they almost sprung a monumental upset on their Irish hosts, the Saints headed home to England imbued by their near-miracle, eventually marching to their second ever domestic league title — a first in 10 years.

“The experience we had there was a huge learning curve moving into the knockout games in the Premiership”, Dowson says, “and also a huge learning curve and experience for players like Fin Smith, Alex Mitchell and Alex Coles to play at that sort of level in club rugby.

“There were loads that came out of it from a technical and tactical point of view but, really, more from how you deal with the pressure of big games and how you make sure you’re set.

“I think that will hold us in good stead moving into this week.”

But however seminal it was at the time, Dowson maintains that Northampton’s 2024 trip to Dublin is more history, now, than it is relevant.

Leinster, having “recruited very well with those characters” — namely Jordie Barret, RG Snyman and Rabah Slimani — look an even scarier beast heading into Saturday’s semi-final sequel at the Aviva Stadium.

Defending under the influence of Jacques Nienaber, the eastern province have blown Harlequins and Glasgow off the road without conceding a point in their two Champions Cup knockout fixtures so far. But Tyler Bleyendaal’s attack has also begun to rev its engine: in their last five halves of European rugby, Leinster have scored 22 unanswered tries, racking up 142 points without concession since Tom de Glanville dotted down for Bath just before half-time in their final pool game.

“There are loads of different contexts” to meeting Leinster in 2025, Dowson says. “Another year for [Jacques] Nienaber to get his teeth into it as well; the experience of the players coming through like [Sam] Prendergast, and also that press D has put them onto that next level.

“The other thing to bear in mind there”, Dowson adds, “is Glasgow and Harlequins are two of the best attacking sides in the tournament.

“I think Quins with Marcus Smith and the nines they carry, and people like Alex Dombrandt, they’re unbelievable in attack. The same with Glasgow: I think they’ve got more line-breaks than anyone else bar Leinster in the URC, so to be able to nil them on the big stage is very, very impressive.

“That speaks to two things in my mind: Nienaber’s system and what he’s instilled in those players, and the ability and the work of those players to execute the system.

One of the things we learned last year was how incredibly well-prepped they were for our game. They had a plan for Alex Mitchell, they had a plan for our exit lineout, they had a plan for our attack lineout. They would have spent the last two weeks fine-tuning that.

Northampton have changed, too, over the last 12 months, albeit broadly for the worse until this month.

The reigning Premiership champions have for most of the season languished nearer the bottom of their domestic league table than its play-off spots.

Dowson doesn’t directly attribute blame to injuries or to Saints’ increased number of international call-ups this term, instead artfully lamenting the inability to enjoy “a run of consistent selection” throughout Saints’ patchy title defence. (It must be noted, too, that any team in world rugby would feel the loss of Courtney Lawes, who may well tour with the Lions this summer after spending a season with Brive in France’s second tier).

But ever since what Dowson describes as a “watershed” 33-0 home defeat to East Midlands nemeses Leicester Tigers last month, Northampton have been able to weave back together something resembling their first-choice 23. A promising performance away to Sale in late March, albeit one which again resulted in defeat, proved catalytic in their turnaround.

Dowson’s side are now back in gear. They battered French opponents Clermont and Castres to book Saturday’s last-four rematch with Leinster. They sent a second-string team to Newcastle and won a bonus-point barnburner. Most recently, and probably more notably, they scored seven tries as they put a serious dent in Bristol’s ambitions to host a Premiership semi-final.

Northampton boss Dowson acknowledges that his side have likely left it too late to extend their league season and says he may have been “naive in going all-in” on both the league and Europe. But the former England international back row makes no apologies for treating the Champions Cup with a reverence unmatched by most Premiership clubs.

“I think you can see how we have applied ourselves in it and gone after it in the last two seasons, how much it means,” he explains.

“The club has a relatively good history in it, the fact that we won in 2000 with Pat Lam and Paul Grayson et al. We got to the final in 2011 and had some good cup runs in that period of time.

And I think it’s special because every year, you play the same sides in the league, more or less: you go to The Rec, Saracens, you go to Kingston Park, whereas we don’t often get the opportunity to go to Pretoria for example. There were lads who had never flown outside of Europe playing against the Bulls.

“We hadn’t played Stade for years and years. To go and challenge ourselves against a French side in Paris, and experience Paris together… I think that’s why it has that certain magic, really.

“I think in Europe, for the [most part], we have lots of our internationals available for those games and it’s given us a great opportunity to go deep into the tournament. I think the cup has given us an opportunity to get stuck in and express ourselves and take some of the pressure off the league.”

Dowson has twice had his heart broken by Leinster at the business end of the European Cup: while his Northampton side’s gallant fightback at Croke Park last year fell just short, he also experienced first-hand as a player Leinster’s legendary comeback from 22-6 down to beat the Saints in the 2011 final in Cardiff.

Leo Cullen’s side are anywhere between 18- and 22-point favourites with bookmakers to vanquish their English opponents once more this Saturday but if Leinster are to win by such a margin, they’ll surely have to rack up a serious tally: Northampton, with the band back together since the Six Nations, have averaged 45 points in their last four games (or 48 in their last three if you exclude the trip to Newcastle, for which Dowson made 14 changes to his starting lineup).

If the visitors can get any purchase up front, a well-oiled attack boasting potential Lions in back row Henry Pollock, half-backs Alex Mitchell and Fin Smith, centre Fraser Dingwall and star wing Tommy Freeman, can surely stress Leinster to a greater extent than the less talented Quins, or a Glasgow outfit shorn of a handful of their most explosive Scottish internationals.

Less certain is whether Northampton can themselves prove an immovable object in the face of Leinster’s seemingly unstoppable attacking force.

But Dowson would rather have the opportunity to find out than sit at home and wonder.

“I think we’ve got the capability from an attack point of view to create pressure on their blitz D and their press D,” Dowson says. “And that’s easy for me to say, now, because I’m not running into the blitz D! We’ve talked a bit about that.

“Basically, it then comes down to, defensively, can we live with their all-court game? It’s not going to be a case of they’re just going to beat you up front. It’s not just the case that they’ve got great shape — they’ve got great ball carriers, they’ve got offloaders, they’ve got set pieces that are going to be a challenge.

“One of the things we talk about every year at the beginning of the campaign is that we want to play against the best sides in the world and test ourselves — and that’s what we are going to do: test ourselves in the set piece, attack and defence.”