Dowson delighted to hand new deal to Saints centre Litchfield

On Thursday afternoon, it was confirmed that the centre had extended his contract at cinch Stadium at Franklin’s Gardens.

The Bedford-born back, who has been deployed on the wing as well as in the midfield this season, has donned the Saints shirt 33 times since graduating from the club's Academy setup.

Litchfield made his first-team debut on the final day of the 2020/21 season, against Bath, going on to earn nine and 11 appearances respectively over the next two campaigns with Saints.

Litchfield has already beaten those tallies so far this term, impressing on both sides of the ball in his 12 appearances in all competitions so far, while also scoring the match-winning try at Gloucester back in December.

And Saints boss Dowson said: “Litch has worked very hard and continues to get better and better, becoming more and more his own person on the pitch.

“When we’ve had some injuries this season, he’s played some games out of position, but he has learned an awful lot from that and from getting more game-time, stacking up a lot of minutes across both the Premiership and Champions Cup competitions.

“In our last match against Newcastle, we saw just how effective he can be in his preferred position (centre) at getting us going forward, with great distribution skills which he’s always working on.

“Within our environment, he’s someone that quietly and determinedly keeps on improving, and during matches he’ll get through a lot of unseen work that people might not notice, while also making a lot of breaks and offloads which are clearer to see.

“Tom’s obviously in a very competitive positional group, with Fraser Dingwall, Rory Hutchinson, Burger Odendaal and now Tommy Freeman in that space as well. But he’s putting his hand up to play amongst some of the very best players in the country, also going for that shirt.

"He will learn a lot from them, but whenever he plays in black, green and gold, he shows what he’s capable of.”