'We've got the opportunity to do something special': Northampton's Phil Dowson

Northampton director of rugby Phil Dowson has challenged his squad to make sure their peak performance of the season comes in the Investec Champions Cup final against Bordeaux on Saturday.

The Saints head to Cardiff having delivered a stunning semi-final victory over tournament favourites Leinster in Dublin.

Tommy Freeman scored a hat-trick of tries as Northampton battled to a 37-34 win, holding off a fightback from the Irish side – who were aiming to reach a fourth consecutive final – having been down to 14 men after Saints lock Alex Coles was sent to the sin-bin late on.

Bordeaux, meanwhile, secured their place at the Principality Stadium following a 35-18 victory over defending champions Toulouse.

Dowson, though, does not want Northampton’s European campaign to be defined by their Dublin heroics.

“Fundamentally, for these next couple of training days, we have to focus on what it means to perform on a big stage,” said Dowson, who played in Northampton’s 2011 Champions Cup final defeat to Leinster in Cardiff – when the Saints lost after being 22-6 ahead at half-time.

“You often see across sports that semi-finals are end-to-end classic encounters and then finals are often a nervy, turgid affair where the margins are very tight.

“We have spoken about that, we understand that and we need to make sure we don’t panic when those things happen.

“We want to make sure – and I am sure Bordeaux are saying exactly the same thing – that (semi-final) is not the summit of our season, that this game is our best performance and our most exciting one.

“So we can’t be satisfied just to be here – I’ve got to make sure we get our training level right and what is important to play against Bordeaux.”

Dowson is determined to keep everyone focused on the job in hand, despite all of the extra attention in the build-up – with Saints having lifted their only Champions Cup 25 years ago.

“There’s going to be distractions this week,” said Dowson, who will check on the fitness of Curtis Langdon and James Ramm after they both sustained injuries in the Gallagher Premiership win over Saracens.

“One of them is the media, one of them is the travel, one of them is a different stadium with a roof on, then the expectation of playing in the final, so we want to normalise that,” he said.

Dowson added: “We don’t want to get too caught up in ‘it has been 25 years and are we going to do something different’.

“We have got to make sure, actually, that it’s a great occasion. We’ve got the opportunity to do something special as a group.”

Tournament organisers have announced Saturday’s final in Cardiff will be shown live and free-to-air by S4C and via the BBC iPlayer and streamed on the Welsh broadcaster’s YouTube channel.