Dowson salutes 'brilliant' Catley as try-scoring centre breaks Saints record
Phil Dowson has hailed talented teen Will Catley after he became the youngest Saints try scorer in the professional era last weekend.
The England Under-18s centre, who is a pupil at Stowe School, dotted down during the first half of the PREM Rugby Cup defeat at Saracens.
And at the age of just 17 years and 250 days, it meant he broke the record set by Henry Pollock, another former Stowe student, by 31 days.
Discussing Catley, Saints boss Dowson said: "He's been brilliant.
"As part of the pathway, different players will drop in while they're still at school to see the environment and for us to understand what they're good at and how they are among the senior group, how confident they are and what we need to be considerate of the following year.
"Cats came in at the end of last season a couple of times, trained really well, Sam (Vesty) really liked him and thought he saw some real quality so there was the opportunity to bring him in full-time for the Sri Lanka trip and he shone out there.
"It gave us another opportunity for him to play last weekend, Stowe were very kind in releasing him and giving him the chance to make his debut.
"I appreciate it probably wasn't a great debut from a result point of view, but from a performance point of view we thought he was excellent again.
"Getting the young lads in, seeing the journey they go on, seeing really ambitious and conscientious young fellas go about their business and trying to achieve their ambitions in sport is very rewarding."