Dowson admits Tigers pressure too much for Saints

Saints surged out of the blocks in the 250th East Midlands derby but were unable to maintain the momentum given to them by Alex Mitchell and Tommy Freeman’s quickfire tries in the first 17 minutes.

They were ultimately forced back into their own half for the vast majority of the second half, a stream of penalties against them only exacerbating matters.

Eventually, the patience of referee Karl Dickson ran out and he sent Juarno Augustus, Emmanuel Iyogun and Mitchell to the sin bin in the space of nine minutes, with the Tigers ruthlessly exploiting the gaps this created.

Dowson said: “When you put a side under pressure, they’ll give penalties away and if you give enough penalties away, you get yellow cards.

“We start doing things you wouldn’t necessarily do, so pressure will lead to ill-discipline, ill-discipline will lead to punishment and I think saw that today.

“We were under a ton of pressure at the set-piece, sometimes aerial, territory.

“All those different things have an impact and that leads to that situation.”

While Northampton extended their lead to 21-10 soon after the restart, the turning point of the match can be traced back to the closing stages of the first half when Leicester hauled themselves back into the match after a prolonged spell of pressure.

It eventually led to Freddie Steward scoring the first of his three tries at Franklin’s Gardens and it set the tone for a second half in which Saints were pinned back almost throughout.

Dowson felt this was partly self-inflicted: “I thought we saw a lot of what our game plan wanted to be and when we created opportunities, we took those.

“Towards the end of the first half, we gave them chances in our 22 and eventually that pressure told, and we didn’t manage to get away from it when we did have opportunities.

“There was a line-out we threw over the top, there was an off-load off a turnover scrum, so there were a couple of things where we didn’t manage to clear our lines effectively and if you do that against Leicester, you are going to get punished.”

Saints’ chances were not helped by Courtney Lawes being forced off following a HIA ten minutes into the second half, meaning they lost his considerable influence when the heat on them was increasing.

Iyogun’s yellow card could also be ascribed to tiredness after the loosehead had to return to the field following a nasty injury to Ethan Waller just three minutes after the replacement’s arrival.

“You don’t want to lose any player,” Dowson said. “Courtney took a head knock and he’s come off with that.

“But those things happen and Ethan Waller came off as well, so that’s not ideal but these things happen and you need to make sure that your squad is capable, and I’ve got no doubt in any of the players that we’ve got to step in.”