COURTNEY Lawes has never been one to turn his face away from reality. His first reaction at the final whistle of his final game for Northampton, the club he joined 17 years ago, was not unbridled joy at the prospect of lifting the Premiership trophy but annoyance that the Saints had not brought their best clobber to Twickenham.
“I am still livid from the game,” were his first words in an interview 30 minutes after Northampton won the title for the second time. “I do not think we could have played any worse – but what a way to go out.”
Northampton led 15-3 after 27 minutes through two quick tries after Bath’s prop Beno Obano had been sent off for a high tackle on Juarno Augustus. They had struggled in the opening quarter to shake off Bath’s blitz defence with scrum-half Ben Spencer putting pressure on his opposite number Alex Mitchell.
Bath were playing the underdog role, looking to stop Northampton at source and feed off the penalties they squeezed in the scrum and the breakdown. The Saints have added a physical side to their game this season and a greater robustness in defence, but they remain a side prepared to give it a go from anywhere and the pressure of a final was not going to put them off.
But they lacked their customary precision and from the opening minutes when Ollie Sleightholme came into the midfield but did not quite time his run and dropped the ball, allowing a counter-attack that saw Matt Gallagher dispossessed a few metres out by George Furbank’s tackle, poor passing resulted in handling errors or took the pace out of attacks.
It was a reflection both of the occasion and the pressure exerted by Bath who following Obano’s dismissal tightened their approach and took to the air having lost two of their ball-carriers with Alfie Barbeary sacrificed because of the need to bring on another loose-head prop.
The game slowed down, penalties abounded and Bath got back into the game through a try from a driving line-out. When the two sides met at Franklin’s Gardens earlier in the season it was a week after the World Cup final that saw New Zealand’s Sam Cane sent off for a dangerous tackle on 28 minutes.
South Africa were then leading 9-3 but only scored another penalty, when Cane’s yellow card was upgraded to red on review, but the team that found itself down to 14 players became galvanised by their misfortune and scored the only try of the match in going down by a point.
Bath were pressing for victory at the end after a final penalty gave them an attacking line-out, but by then fatigue had set in and, after the line-out drives had been repulsed, George Hendy, the replacement who six minutes earlier had created the winning try for Mitchell, won a turnover to seal the outcome.
They became the fifth winners of the league in
