Northampton welcome Eddie Hearn's input as Pollock talks progress

Northampton Saints boss Phil Dowson believes that England star Henry Pollock wants to stay with the club beyond the end of his current contract, which expires next summer.

Dowson revealed talks are going well to keep the England and Lions star, but he will need to fit him in to the salary cap while keeping 57 or 58 other players happy as well.

Promoter Eddie Hearn hit the headlines earlier this summer when he suggested that 21-year-old Pollock is a “seven-figure player”, a salary that very few clubs could find room for.

“I think Eddie Hearn has a job to do, and that’s to promote his client, and that’s to ask for more money for his client, and he’s done both of those very effectively, and I think he’s exceptional like that. Eddie is great for the game,” said Dowson.

“I think having eyeballs on a sport, we said that we want to publicise the game, grow the game, get more on people in it, and he has the ability to do that across lots of different platforms.

“So, we still have to make decisions based on our budget, based on our financial situation, and we’ll continue to do that in the best way possible, and that’s the discussion with agents, discussion with the group, discussion with the decision makers, around what we can afford.

“How we put a squad together, and how that fits within our budget, moving forward. And that’s always been the case. We want to keep him, Henry Pollock. That’s fundamental, and nothing’s changed.”

Dowson added: “He can pick a number. My job is to try to fit 57-58 players within a squad within a budget. And I’ll continue to try and do that.

“People have gone straight to the £1m mark. But the other things he (Hearn) said were, ‘Henry wants to win stuff. Henry wants to stay at Northampton. Henry wants to play with that group of players’. He is himself and understands that we can talk about it, but we’ve got to perform.

“He wants to win the World Cup. So the appetite is for him to stay. Now we’ve got to find some sort of happy medium, and I’ve never, ever spoken about anyone’s contract negotiations publicly while they’re going on, and I never will. But we really want to keep him.

“It is going well, we are still pushing it through.”