Cup win a 'springboard' for the Saints
Sun, 21 Mar 2010 22:05
Phil Dowson and the rest of the Northampton Saints players were of one voice as to the impact the victory in the LV= Cup Final can have for the club this season.
The 30-24 win against Gloucester both secured the Saints' first major piece of domestic silverware in their history and a guaranteed place in the 2010/11 Heineken Cup.
But with just under a third of the season still to go the team wants to use this success as a springboard for the Guinness Premiership run-in and Heineken Cup knock-out stages.
"It's massive for us," Dowson told Sky Sports.
"We set our targets at the start of the year and this is the first one we've achieved. It's been a whole squad effort. A lot of Wanderers boys who weren't involved today did a hell of a job down at the Ospreys earlier in the tournament. And we got a huge win today against Gloucester.
"When it comes to the finals and the big pressure situations you don't know how you're going to react. We made some errors and gave them opportunities but we regrouped under the sticks and came back."
Bruce Reihana had lifted the European Challenge Cup last May, but he said that the LV= Cup win ranked up with the best in his career.
"It's right up there, especially as I've been on the wrong end of the result in the past," he told BBC Radio Northampton.
"Even though it wasn't as good as we'd have wanted we got the result. We kept on giving them chances, which was frustrating, but our defence held in the end and we came away with it."
The Saints scored three tries through James Downey, Lee Dickson and LV= Cup man of the match Soane Tonga'uiha. But Stephen Myler played an instrumental part too, running the game with aplomb and landing six out of six shots at goal for a total of 16 points.
"It was a very quick and open game," he said. "We had confidence coming into it that if we played anywhere near our potential we could come away with it. Everybody put in 100 percent today and we came away with the trophy, which is magnificent.
"We've gone 100 percent in this competition, which shows our attitude towards it. We want to win every game we play in and go as far as we can in every competition. We've managed to win this one and I hope it's only the first."
The Saints are next in action on Saturday, March 27 when they play London Wasps at Franklin's Gardens. Only single seats are still available for this match, which can be ordered now from the Saints online ticketing system.