Northampton 28-14 Gloucester: Hendy and Hutchinson give Saints winning response

Northampton beat Gloucester 28–14 at Franklin’s Gardens on Saturday, a Premiership Rugby Round 5 win built on 28 unanswered points and four converted tries from a side that had been 14–0 down. George Hendy and Rory Hutchinson scored three minutes apart in the second half, Anthony Belleau converted every Northampton try, and Saints answered the previous weekend’s 28–7 defeat at Leicester. The match also cost them Alex Mitchell, the scrum-half forced off with a hamstring injury in the first half.

How did Northampton vs Gloucester recover from 14–0 down?

Gloucester scored first and scored again. Max Llewellyn crossed on eight minutes and Will Joseph followed on the half-hour, with George Barton converting both, and Northampton had conceded two converted tries before they had scored anything at all. Trailing by 14 points at home, a week after losing at Welford Road, is the position that decides whether a response is a wobble or a crisis.

The response came inside the last ten minutes of the half. Tom Pearson scored on 35 minutes and Curtis Langdon followed on 40, and Anthony Belleau converted both to send the sides in at 14–14. Saints had been two converted tries behind and reached the interval level, which meant the second half began with the game reset rather than with Northampton chasing it.

The third quarter settled it. George Hendy put Northampton Saints ahead on 62 minutes and Belleau’s conversion opened a seven-point gap. Rory Hutchinson then scored Northampton’s fourth try on 65 minutes and Belleau added the extras to make it 28–14. Two tries in three minutes turned a narrow lead into a two-score one.

What happened to Alex Mitchell?

Alex Mitchell, the Northampton Saints scrum-half, was forced off with a hamstring injury in the first half, with around 20 minutes played. Jonny Weimann came on in his place at scrum-half, and Northampton played the remaining hour of the match with a changed half-back pairing.

Northampton head coach Sam Vesty, speaking to BBC Radio Northampton, said: “He felt something in his hamstring, we can’t know more than that. It may not be too bad but then nobody who pulls their hamstring thinks it’s bad.”

That is the limit of what has been confirmed. The BBC Sport match report records the substitution and states the injury as a hamstring problem, and Vesty offered no timescale beyond it. Nothing further has come from Northampton, Premiership Rugby or the Rugby Football Union, so the extent of the damage is not known.

Why did the second-half defence decide the match?

Because of the arithmetic of the scoreline. Gloucester scored twice in the opening half-hour and then did not score again. Northampton kept them out for the rest of the match, which is how a 14-point deficit became a 14-point win, and it is the part of the performance the four tries tend to obscure.

Two converted tries had put Gloucester 14 clear, and Northampton answered with four of their own, every one of them converted. That is the shape of the turnaround: a side that had not scored a try for 35 minutes finished the match with four, and the last two came within three minutes of each other.

Belleau’s contribution ran through the whole of it. Four tries are worth 20 points and Belleau added all four of the conversions, worth the other eight, which is the whole of Northampton’s 28, and he did it having come into the side at fly-half in place of the injured Fin Smith.

What did the result mean for Saints?

It meant a week did not become a run. Northampton Saints had been beaten 28–7 at Welford Road seven days earlier, a result covered in our Leicester vs Northampton match report, and going 14–0 down at home to Gloucester invited a second defeat inside a week. Recovering to win by two converted tries removed that danger and did it in front of their own crowd.

The side that produced it was not quite the one that began the campaign. Belleau came in at fly-half in place of the injured Fin Smith, Ollie Sleightholme and Callum Chick also came into the starting line-up, and Fraser Dingwall captained Northampton. After Mitchell went off with around 20 minutes played, Saints also finished the match with a half-back pairing they had not started with.

Gloucester, for their part, left with nothing from a game they led by 14 points. Their two tries came early and they did not score again, which is the part of the game that defined their match.

The win came at Franklin’s Gardens on Saturday 31 October in Round 5 of Premiership Rugby, and it leaves Northampton with the response they needed after Leicester, and with a scrum-half whose injury the club has described only in the terms Vesty used.