And it is not just his thick eyebrows and Manc accent that gives Nick Johnston something of the Gallagher look. He has the confidence and straight-talking that has seen Gallagher dubbed the wiseman of rock.

For instance, listen to Johnston give his thoughts on the perspective that the southern hemisphere is way ahead of England in terms of high performance: "They may have beaten us recently, but talk of them being ahead of us in terms of knowledge and understanding is rubbish – it's a lot of hot air man."

As a family newspaper we had to substitute rubbish for a word that Gallagher has used countless times in interviews, but you get the drift.

Johnston talks with the fervour and purpose of a man driven by a desire to start a revolution, and the Saints is where he is going to fire it into action.

The Saints players won't be lying around in their beds, but that's where Johnston's revolution starts.

Before they go to bed each night, every player drinks a low-fat hot chocolate, that then replenishes their spent protein while they sleep to get them ready for another arduous day of pre-season training.

The word 'brutal' has been used by more than one Saints player to describe Johnston's regime that often starts at 6am and moves outside the weights room to include, tug 'o' wars, strongman competitions, boxing and kayaking.

Backed financially by the club, Johnston is putting together a team of specialists in high performance that would have Sir Clive Woodward looking on enviously.

The Premiership's first 'head of performance' has pulled together a team of 14 trainers, physios, nutritionists, medics, sports scientists, biomechanists, and even a myofascial release specialist, who helps players muscles recover after a heavy workout.

And Saints need it.

The fallen giants have fallen way behind since winning the European Cup in 2000, with Johnston claiming they are now two years behind the Premiership's top six in terms of strength and conditioning.

"I've got 18-year-olds at Sale stronger than our first team forwards," says Johnston with Gallagher-esque bluntness, while overlooking the players kayaking in a bell boat around Pitsford reservoir.

"We have just done two days of testing, things they have never done before in their lives and they are average. We didn't do the bench press, it's irrelevant in rugby.

"We did a bench pull, we have put in a load of new equipment to see how much power they create in each leg in watts, that is a relevant figure. That allows us to measure them all year round.

"Their body fats are measured over 10 sites on their body and not four.

"We have got to be given time, our processes are going to take 12 months to really hit home with them.

"I will be a lot happier with where we are in 12 months' time, mind you I'm a lot happier than I was 10 days ago, purely because of application levels."

If there was anybody getting carried with last season's unbeaten campaign and National League One and National Trophy double, then Johnston's plain-speaking will put an end to that.

"At the moment we are not strong and we are not aerobically fit (ie stamina)," says Johnston.

"We gave them a bit of freedom in their transition programme, when they were on holiday from season into off-season.

"They had to send in weekly emails to show how they were getting on and they just weren't reaching any targets, which was quite alarming – I had to scratch my head a little bit."

To get Saints back on track Johnston has totally revamped the players' training, including what he calls 'lifestyle management', which means they have breakfast and lunch at the ground, meals put together by Professor Don MacLaren, a leading sports nutritionist, who also works with footballers at Liverpool and Everton.

And for some, having breakfast put on will be a welcome sight.

"There lies another area of concern," says Johnston.

"Some of them weren't having breakfast, no wonder two of them passed out on the first morning.

"It is just education.

"They eat the right things at the wrong time.

"They have some supplement protein and fruit that we mix up in a smoothie for them before they come in.

"We have even gone to the extent where we give them a specialist drink at night, a hot chocolate with no fat in it that releases protein for nine hours during the night. It keeps the protein levels at optimum so they are ready to train in the morning.

"We will do that during the season and go even more intrinsic for games."

The players also start their day with blood and urine tests and punch into a computer their general 'well-being'.

The results are all logged and will help flag up when players are tired and injuries are around the corner.

"They tap in how many hours sleep they have had, how their self-esteem is, any injury worries and that goes straight into a graph," says Johnston.

"That builds up a profile and then we will start seeing trends of when their immune system is dipping, so we know when they are more susceptible to illness and we will change their training."

It is a whole new approach for Saints as Johnston looks to take what he was doing at Sale, where he powered them to the Premiership title, to another level. When Johnston decided he had gone as far as he could at Sale there were plenty of clubs from both here and abroad interested in his services.

"I came here for the challenge, the role, and working with Jim (Mallinder) again," says Johnston. "I had the autonomy to change the department.

"We have gone a step further. It is not about Nick Johnston's way, it is about my team having a say. I walked into a very unhappy environment in terms of the medical and fitness side of things. It was dysfunctional to be honest.

"We've pulled that round quite quickly, we have got a good team now. We kept two of the physios, who are outstanding, they just needed to be allowed to breathe and do their job and then I've brought people in.

"We've got a system that works for us and we've evolved it and will continue to evolve it.

"This is another level to what we had at Sale, because of the club and the board and Mr Barwell, they have put in the resources to do this.

"It won't happen overnight, but ultimately we want to be the best there is in the world, it is a big statement, but we do.

"We don't want to hear it's better in Australia or New Zealand, we do a lot of good things here."

The self-proclaimed 'northern monkey' now has a staff of 14 encompassing the medical and the strength and conditioning sides, in fact everything that goes into preparing a player for the high powered crash, bang, wallop of the Guinness Premiership.

"My remit is to make this the best high performance department there is," says Johnston.

"I just believe in cutting down everything that can go wrong and providing every small detail to get the athletes prepared optimally.

"We are doing a lot of blood testing and chemical testing. We're looking at kidney and liver function, examic responses in muscle and we're looking at readiness to train in terms of their cortisone and testosterone levels. We are going quite in depth."

I should have said 'here is the science bit', but Johnston's whole approach is very scientific. The players are also having to learn how to lift weights properly, even how to run again.

"These athletes don't do things very well at the moment in terms of how they fire their muscles for some reason," says Johnston.

"They're not recruiting their muscles in the right order, sometimes people have a hamstring or a calf problem because they have got an issue in their back, because one of the middle group muscles in their posterior chain (ie, back) isn't working properly – we got there in the end at Sale."

Johnston adds: "Rugby has only been professional for 13 or 14 years, it is an embryonic sport professionally.

"When it went professional everybody started lifting weights and that practice becomes ingrained, but people like myself are coming from a more science background.

"You can't legislate for collision, which a lot of the injuries are caused by these days, but we are trying to prepare them so they don't pick up injuries."

With Saints two years behind the likes of Wasps and Leicester, Johnston also has the added pressure of the new Experimental Law Variations (ELVs), which have seen players running 3km further in a match in Super 14.

Johnston says: "Our timetabling is pretty full, they are training three or four times a day, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, at least three times on a Tuesday and Saturday mornings.

"Some of those are teaching lessons, like how to lift properly, but some are heavy, or going through one-to-ones with their pre-habilitation programmes to keep away their injuries or work on their flexibility and core muscles.

"They did yoga this morning, wrestling yesterday and they start boxing next week.

"We have had to look at their endurance levels because of the ELVs coming in.

"There is a suggestion players are running 3km, but I don't think it will come to that just yet here, because of the pure collision-orientated nature of the Premiership.

"Though we have turned a little more emphasis on to our aerobic and endurance work than we have in previous years.

"We have got to get the athletes up to speed. This to me is a three-year plan.

"These guys are two years off the top six fitness levels in the Premiership. I will get them better, if I don't I will lose my job."

And to make sure he keeps to his word Johnston has arranged for one of the IRB's high performance coaches in Dan Collins to assess him and his department twice a year.

"He is in the top five consultants in the world in high performance," says Johnston.

"He will come over twice a year. He will give us good feedback and it helps me develop, the department and the coaches as well and Jim Mallinder has embraced that.

"All we can do is get better and if we get better then surely the players will get better, you can't be afraid of constructive criticism."

Johnston is a man thirsty for knowledge in his efforts to be ahead of the competition.

He has studied how Aussie Rules Football and the top rugby league clubs train Down Under, as well as being holed up in the Australian camp ahead of last season's World Cup.

"The Aussies are not ahead of us," says Johnston. "What they do is resource it, like we are doing here, and they put the people in place."

Traditionally all the strength and conditioning is done in the pre-season, but Johnston says there will be no let-up when the Premiership starts.

"We will continue it through the season," says Johnston. "Jim is great and has given me a massive amount of time to plan in strength and conditioning during the season."

All the players have their own targets, based on their weaknesses.

And just to make sure nobody is slacking Johnston is about to bring in a GPS satellite system to monitor speed and distances run and also their heart rates in games and in training.

Saints fans have constantly been worried about their underpowered forwards in recent seasons, and Johnston has been throwing some more science at the players to help them in the collisions.

"We are going to look at kinetic energy in a collision, that's mass times velocity squared," says Johnston.

"If mass is the same, whoever is quicker into the contact will absorb their energy and use it to get over the collision line, so speed of movement is going to be key for us in a collision.

"That's why we have brought in this Keiser pneumatic resistance equipment. I think the collision area may have reached its peak, it's just that Northampton haven't reached their peak."

Saints boss Mallinder has made a host of signings this summer, but Johnston is undoubtedly his most significant one. The revolution has only just started, it might take time, but in the northern monkey all Saints fans are hoping they have the right man to lead the club back to the promised land.