Phil Dowson offers update on injured England scrum-half Alex Mitchell

Phil Dowson confirmed Alex Mitchell suffered a hamstring injury during Northampton’s 28-14 win against Gloucester on Saturday evening.

Mitchell had to come off in the 21st minute, walking down the DPD Stadium at Franklin’s Gardens tunnel, with 20-year-old Jonny Weimann coming on to replace him.

Northampton refused to let the injury blow derail them as they came back from 14-0 down to secure a bonus-point victory against a Gloucester side who had gone into the Gallagher PREM weekend sitting top of the table.

England will now wait to see whether Mitchell can be available for the Nations Championship match at home to Australia next weekend.

The 29-year-old has already been sidelined with hamstring injuries on three separate occasions during 2026.

When asked about Mitchell, Dowson said: “Mitch has hurt his hamstring, but I don’t know how bad.

“We have to be super careful with him and he knows his own body.”

Northampton were also without Fin Smith and Archie McParland against the Cherry and Whites.

When asked for an update on the England duo, Dowson said: “Fin and Archie are both calf. Fin probably not as bad as Arch, but it remains to be seen. I haven’t seen Arch moving around yet, while Fin has been doing some bits.”

Northampton rallied to score 28 unanswered points after going 14-0 down to Gloucester inside the opening half an hour of the match.

Dowson said: “I thought Gloucester started very well. They had a ton of energy and momentum coming into the game and I thought they showed that.

“We were still a bit frustrated from last week (the 28-7 defeat at Leicester), but what we did was battle hard and I thought we were excellent in that second quarter of the match.

“We got back into the game just before half-time, a great time to score, and we started to really get a bit more momentum ourselves.

“We controlled possession and territory pretty well in the second half and managed to convert some of those opportunities.”

Gloucester head coach George Skivington said: “In the second half, it was scrappy and I thought Saints’ defence was outstanding to limit our opportunities.

“We weren’t accurate enough, but give credit to Saints because they did a great job in that second half and we couldn’t quite get a foothold in the game to use our bench the way we wanted to.

“We missed our opportunity with that momentum in the first half to really give ourselves a shot at winning today.”