Northampton Saints 41-34 Gloucester: Saints beat top-four rivals in 12-try thriller

Northampton Saints continued their excellent recent form with a 41-34 bonus point win over fellow semi-final chasing Gloucester Rugby at cinch Stadium at Franklin’s Gardens.

A tight second half saw the sides head in 10-10 at half-time with Seb Blake scoring twice for the Cherry & Whites and a combination of Alex Waller’s try and the boot of James Grayson keeping the scores level.

In the second half however, Saints were at their very best, initially trading another score with the visitors, as Callum Braley and Ollie Thorley continued the ding-dong approach to the game, before flexing their attacking muscles.

Three tries in eight minutes, including Alex Moon’s first ever Premiership Rugby score, before Sam Graham and Tommy Freeman put Saints into a suddenly comfortable 34-15 lead after 58 minutes.

That lead was extended further when Fraser Dingwall finished off a sublime team try to crash over for Saints’ sixth of the afternoon, and with just 12 minutes on the clock, led 41-15.

The Cherry & Whites needed just one score to take a try bonus point of their own, but incredibly they found momentum of their own, scoring three tries in six minutes through a Jamal Ford-Robinson brace and Matias Alemanno’s try to walk away with two bonus points and leave Northampton with their heads held high.

While Saracens and Sale might be racing ahead in the top two positions in the Premiership, the battle for the rest of the top four is fiercely tight with Saints now edging four points clear in third of the Cherry and Whites, who started the day a place below them.

Northampton director of rugby Phil Dowson told BBC Radio Northampton:

"The table is so compressed to the team just behind you, to give away two bonus points in the last 10 minutes is really disappointing.

"We did loads of stuff in the first half that was very good. Good sides like Gloucester aren't going to go away before half-time, they are going to be close to you, they are going to be tight.

"But the groundwork we put in in the first half came to the fore in the second and for large periods of that time we looked really good."

Gloucester head coach George Skivington told BBC Radio Gloucestershire:

"I thought our bench was outstanding when they came on, I think they really injected something into the game and that's why we came away with a couple of points at the end because they brought some real good energy and accuracy.

"I think for the rest of the game we didn't really have that to be honest. We made some breaks and bits and pieces but we weren't accurate enough.

"I thought Saints had a real bite about them. I thought they came out of the blocks really hard. We knew there would be real momentum shifts and at one stage they scored a couple of wonder tries and suddenly you're lagging by 15 points.

"Disappointing for us today, I don't think we were good enough."