Lost amid the excitement of the Six Nations weekend, there was a quiet power shift at the top of the Aviva Premiership. From the beginning of the season, Saracens have sat atop the table, but last weekend their slip-up against London Irish allowed Northampton to overtake them with a hugely impressive win at Exeter Chiefs, and there is a strong argument to be made that Saints will not be usurped this season.
At this time of year, domestic results are always distorted as the Premiership teams carry on, with some more depleted by international call-ups than others. Saracens were clearly shorn of several quality players during their defeat, but still managed to field 11 internationals in the starting XV. Northampton, on the other hand, were missing eight players and had to travel to the notoriously difficult Sandy Park – with Exeter missing only Jack Nowell to England – and came away with a 17-16 win.
It was exactly the kind of match that Northampton would have lost last season, but they have added resolve and depth of squad to as good a first XV as any in England. In the two previous weeks they were, by admittedly generous estimates, missing 20 players for the LV Cup matches and still won both games.
Only Saracens can come close to challenging Saints' pool of resources this season and results suggest that they will still come off second best: as well as the respective results at the weekend, when Saracens had the easier match by far, it was Saints' second string who prevailed in the cup game a week earlier and, when the full-strength sides met at Franklin's Gardens, Northampton demolished the then leaders 40-21.
Although it was the 1999-2000 season when Saints won the Heineken Cup – still their only major piece of silverware – their best rugby came under Wayne Smith, who dismantled the club's academy system to free up funds to strengthen the first team. Now the academy is back, under the stewardship of the former scrum-half Alan Dickens, and is working better than ever. The free-scoring winger Jamie Elliott is the most exciting recent prospect, but props Alex and Ethan Waller have both impressed, as has the second-choice hooker Mike Haywood. There have also been first-team chances for the likes of Will Hooley, Ryan Glynn, Alex Day, Ben Nutley, Tom Collins and Tom Stephenson, all of whom have impressed the fans at Franklins Gardens.
The academy is a strong supplement to a first team that contains established world-class players such as George North, Ben Foden, Tom Wood, Dylan Hartley, Alex Corbisiero, Kahn Fotuali'i and Courtney Lawes, all of whom should be available for the closing stages of the season.
Furthermore, Jim Mallinder and Dorian West deserve credit for the number of less illustrious names who have been brought in and developed into success stories: Lee Dickson, Stephen Myler, Calum Clark, Christian Day, Sam Dickinson, the Pisi brothers Ken and George, James Wilson, prop Salesi Ma'afu and England's centre du jour, Luther Burrell. In Elliott, Alex Waller and Day, Saints are blessed to have three of the best English players seemingly not up for international consideration, all of which can only be a good thing for them.
As the thrashings handed out to their title rivals Saracens and Bath already this season, as well as a stunning win in Dublin over Leinster, evidence, Northampton's first XV is a thrilling one. The evidence is mounting that with unrelenting competition for almost every position, their squad is one that will go on to win a long-overdue title.
