The pick of these coming from Sharky Robinson who is really back at his best playing inside fellow All Black Carlos Spencer.
Despite a stuttering start we really look like we are going places and on Saturday you couldn’t help but notice something I’ve not seen at the Gardens in quite a while, players enjoying themselves and playing for each other. Long may it continue.
The Powergen Cup fades into the background now until December when we take on the Tigers at Welford Road and this week its back to the bread and butter of the Guinness Premiership with the visit of London Irish. To say Irish have been a bogey side for the Saints at the Gardens is somewhat of an understatement and Saturday is as good a time as ever to finally lay that ghost to rest.
Irish though, as they have proved in the past against us, are another Jeckyll & Hyde side and sometimes well and truly have the luck of the Irish when they travel to Northampton. I’m taking the lads to step above all this though and carry on the work of last Saturday and a win that will start to see us climb that table.
LONG AND WINDING ROAD (well towpath)
This Saturday also sees the fourth annual ‘Saints with Heart’ (or SWH4) sponsored walk for the British Heart Foundation.
A band of hikers will be setting off at first light along river and canal from Wolverton heading to the Gardens meeting up with a second group of walkers, along the way at Stoke Bruerne.
For the young, and a few not so young, there’s a barge trip through Blisworth tunnel in the middle of the walk while the more hardy of us march, as Saints do, over the hill. We should all be arriving at the Gardens around one thirty. Give us a wave.
There will be a bucket shake at the ground in aid of the fund so please fill your pockets with all that unwanted lose change before you head to the ground and if you’re feeling more generous, stop one of us and we will happily take your hard earned cash off you on a sponsor form so we can claim the tax back too.
Having raised over £33,000 in the first three walks we are looking to make this a record year again and every little bit helps so please dig deep.
As part of the SWH4 fundraising there was a quiz night at the Gardens on Friday with around 150 people taking part. A good night was had by all, even those that couldn’t decipher some of Paul Flatts questions. Well done to Paul and Phil Hollis for organising the evening but the biggest question of the night was, was that really our chairman cuddling a stuffed toy of a Tiger. We understand the Leicester supporters who own the ‘alleged’ negatives may be holding them for blackmail purposes at a later date, but no you can’t have Bruce Reihana.
THE DAY THE ALL BLACKS CAME TO THE GARDENS
It seems we all let a centenary pass us by a couple of weeks back. Thursday 28th September 1905 was the one and only time the All Blacks came to the Gardens to play the Saints. It was New Zealand’s first major sporting venture to Great Britain and in a 35 game nine month tour they lost just the once, to Wales, but returned home in triumph and set the benchmark in a new style of rugby. They also laid the foundations of the modern day All Blacks. In New Zealand this team, known as the Originals, are still talked about to this day. Indeed it was through his interest in the history of this tour that Wayne Smith knew something of Northampton before he took over as coach.
Early last century the townsfolk of Northampton, as they headed off to the shoe factories, were surprised to see such ‘modern’methods as the New Zealanders on 7.00am training runs and ‘hi’tech’ jerseys with a silk panel that made tackling harder around the chest. There was great interest in the game locally.
Watched by a crowd of around 6,000 on a midweek afternoon the game was an eight try, 32-0 victory to the New Zealanders and reports of the game suggest ‘the Colonials’ line was not threatened once. The press of the day were in awe of a team that let their backs play with the ball instead of constant mauls and scrummages, they wrote of the unusual sight of a team running lines and having an organised defence.
However they were even more in awe of the size of these ‘giants’. The average weight of the All Blacks was around 12 stone, yes twelve, yet they contained ,monsters’ who tipped the scales at around 15 stone. Lord knows what our grandfathers would think of the six foot two, sixteen stone backs of today, never mind some twenty stone plus forwards. This weight advantage allowed them to play with one less in the pack with the extra man playing as a third centre. The basic structure though is what we see to this day.
It’s a shame in such a congested season that games like this do not exist anymore in the Northern Hemisphere as still up to the mid nineties one of the seasons highlights was the international touring team playing the Midlands on cold winter midweek afternoons. However I guess that’s the price of professionalism but we have not done too bad in recent years in seeing All Blacks on the Gardens turf in Buck Shelford, Andy Blowers, Sharky Robinson, Bruce Reihana, Carlos Spencer and Sam Harding. Now if we could just string together a run of form like their forefathers we’d be laughing.
A footnote: There is currently a display at the Rugby Museum, Twickenham on the 1905 tour and their have been reports of items moving of their own accord and things going bump in the night. Spooky.
Despite a stuttering start we really look like we are going places and on Saturday you couldn’t help but notice something I’ve not seen at the Gardens in quite a while, players enjoying themselves and playing for each other. Long may it continue.
The Powergen Cup fades into the background now until December when we take on the Tigers at Welford Road and this week its back to the bread and butter of the Guinness Premiership with the visit of London Irish. To say Irish have been a bogey side for the Saints at the Gardens is somewhat of an understatement and Saturday is as good a time as ever to finally lay that ghost to rest.
Irish though, as they have proved in the past against us, are another Jeckyll & Hyde side and sometimes well and truly have the luck of the Irish when they travel to Northampton. I’m taking the lads to step above all this though and carry on the work of last Saturday and a win that will start to see us climb that table.
LONG AND WINDING ROAD (well towpath)
This Saturday also sees the fourth annual ‘Saints with Heart’ (or SWH4) sponsored walk for the British Heart Foundation.
A band of hikers will be setting off at first light along river and canal from Wolverton heading to the Gardens meeting up with a second group of walkers, along the way at Stoke Bruerne.
For the young, and a few not so young, there’s a barge trip through Blisworth tunnel in the middle of the walk while the more hardy of us march, as Saints do, over the hill. We should all be arriving at the Gardens around one thirty. Give us a wave.
There will be a bucket shake at the ground in aid of the fund so please fill your pockets with all that unwanted lose change before you head to the ground and if you’re feeling more generous, stop one of us and we will happily take your hard earned cash off you on a sponsor form so we can claim the tax back too.
Having raised over £33,000 in the first three walks we are looking to make this a record year again and every little bit helps so please dig deep.
As part of the SWH4 fundraising there was a quiz night at the Gardens on Friday with around 150 people taking part. A good night was had by all, even those that couldn’t decipher some of Paul Flatts questions. Well done to Paul and Phil Hollis for organising the evening but the biggest question of the night was, was that really our chairman cuddling a stuffed toy of a Tiger. We understand the Leicester supporters who own the ‘alleged’ negatives may be holding them for blackmail purposes at a later date, but no you can’t have Bruce Reihana.
THE DAY THE ALL BLACKS CAME TO THE GARDENS
It seems we all let a centenary pass us by a couple of weeks back. Thursday 28th September 1905 was the one and only time the All Blacks came to the Gardens to play the Saints. It was New Zealand’s first major sporting venture to Great Britain and in a 35 game nine month tour they lost just the once, to Wales, but returned home in triumph and set the benchmark in a new style of rugby. They also laid the foundations of the modern day All Blacks. In New Zealand this team, known as the Originals, are still talked about to this day. Indeed it was through his interest in the history of this tour that Wayne Smith knew something of Northampton before he took over as coach.
Early last century the townsfolk of Northampton, as they headed off to the shoe factories, were surprised to see such ‘modern’methods as the New Zealanders on 7.00am training runs and ‘hi’tech’ jerseys with a silk panel that made tackling harder around the chest. There was great interest in the game locally.
Watched by a crowd of around 6,000 on a midweek afternoon the game was an eight try, 32-0 victory to the New Zealanders and reports of the game suggest ‘the Colonials’ line was not threatened once. The press of the day were in awe of a team that let their backs play with the ball instead of constant mauls and scrummages, they wrote of the unusual sight of a team running lines and having an organised defence.
However they were even more in awe of the size of these ‘giants’. The average weight of the All Blacks was around 12 stone, yes twelve, yet they contained ,monsters’ who tipped the scales at around 15 stone. Lord knows what our grandfathers would think of the six foot two, sixteen stone backs of today, never mind some twenty stone plus forwards. This weight advantage allowed them to play with one less in the pack with the extra man playing as a third centre. The basic structure though is what we see to this day.
It’s a shame in such a congested season that games like this do not exist anymore in the Northern Hemisphere as still up to the mid nineties one of the seasons highlights was the international touring team playing the Midlands on cold winter midweek afternoons. However I guess that’s the price of professionalism but we have not done too bad in recent years in seeing All Blacks on the Gardens turf in Buck Shelford, Andy Blowers, Sharky Robinson, Bruce Reihana, Carlos Spencer and Sam Harding. Now if we could just string together a run of form like their forefathers we’d be laughing.
A footnote: There is currently a display at the Rugby Museum, Twickenham on the 1905 tour and their have been reports of items moving of their own accord and things going bump in the night. Spooky.
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