Dowson and Co to soak up celebrations after Saints become champions again

Dowson steered the black, green and gold to title glory in 2024, and he repeated the trick on Saturday afternoon as they saw off Exeter Chiefs in the Allianz Stadium, Twickenham showpiece.

George Hendy's second-half double got the job done for table-toppers Saints, who were made to work extremely hard by a valiant Exeter side.

But Dowson's eventually men got their rewards, and he now wants them to make the most of the celebrations that will follow over the next 24 hours.

"For some people it will be a multi-week thing," Dowson said, when asked how Saints will celebrate.

"The club has been so well supported for such a long period of time and this season, with sell-outs and stuff like that, the town's going to go nuts!

"The players ought to go nuts and in 2024 when we won it, as a coaching group we didn't maybe indulge ourselves in that, and we'll maybe do that a bit better this time and make sure we get the wheels back on for pre-season.

"We'll have a bus tour through Northampton (on Sunday afternoon) and hopefully everyone who came today will turn up and we'll have a good time."

Saints weren't at their free-flowing best at times against Exeter, but they were unlikely to be in the pressure cooker of a final.

Still though, they found a way to win, as they have so often during this special season.

"Throughout the season we've had lots of really good performances and we asked for that today," Dowson said.

"I thought Exeter were brilliant and we had to be at our very best in defence and attack.

"Credit to (Saints defence coach) Lee Radford because we said it was his last game in charge of the defence and we wanted to represent that and I thought we did.

"They talk all the time about defence winning championships and Exeter statistically had the best defence through the year, but I thought our defence was excellent as well.

"It really stood up at the end there and gave us the opportunity to see out the game.

"The other thing we spoke about was that you know when you get a Rob Baxter team, there's pressure and the opportunity to give penalties away. It gave them the chance that they scored from late in the first half.

"If you give penalties away, they are very, very clinical so I thought the ability to defend long phase sets, which we spoke about during the week and to not give penalties away, was excellent."

When asked how he was feeling in the build-up to the final, Dowson said: "I was actually probably more relaxed this week because we'd been there and done that.

"We had the disappointment in the Champions Cup final in Cardiff last season and the lessons we as a coaching group and senior playing group had were unbelievable.

"Fraser Dingwall and Callum Chick were outstanding in coming off the bench and giving us some clear direction and nice calmness in the last 20 minutes.

"From our point of view, that experience showed a little bit, particularly in that last 15, 20 minutes."