LONG READ Why a Northampton Saints title was crucial for the Premiership

It was the legendary Alabama College football coach Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant who first opined ‘offence sells tickets, but defence wins championships’. Supporters of sports across the globe have been arguing toss ever since. Is it better to arrive at a grand final with the better attacking or defensive statistics?

The debate has even penetrated academia, where research into the previous ten years of play in the NBA found the percentage of defensive steals [turnovers] and [shot] blocks were still the most reliable indicators of a championship-winning team. At the same time, the increased impact of marketing and brand awareness has moved the game towards ever greater emphasis on points scoring.

As Steve Kerr, coach of the all-court, all-conquering Golden State Warriors who won the NBA title in three of the four years between 2015-2018, shedding new points-scoring records like confetti along the way, commented:

“Maybe there has been an overcorrection to what was happening 20 years ago. I played in the finals in 2003 and the final scores were like 72-65. It was ugly.

“I think the league did an amazing job of loosening up the game, of creating more freedom.

“But I think we have just gone a little too far. I think the rules have really been geared towards giving the offensive player the advantage.

“It has become much more difficult to play defence in the NBA now.”

No finer town.

Northampton showed up today 🫶 pic.twitter.com/WSVDLBabFN

— Northampton Saints 😇 (@SaintsRugby) June 9, 2024

Offence drives business in American sport, and Premiership Rugby has taken the baton and run as if its life depended on it in the 2023-24 season. The average ball-in-play time is well over 38 minutes in the Prem, four minutes more than the Top 14. More action means more tries, there are more of them scored in England than in France, on average 3.5 compared to 2.8 per game.

Yet the Premiership still lags well behind the Top 14 in the investment it attracts. Canal+ recently reacquired the rights to televise French professional rugby up until the end of 2031-32 season, worth an estimated €129m per season to the Top 14, a 13.3% rise on the previous deal. For every Euro earned from TV revenue by a Gallagher Premiership club, its Top 14 equivalent will be receiving €2.50.

When 14-man Bath led Northampton Saints by three points entering the closing stages of the final, the marketing strategists at Premiership Rugby would have been dropping to their knees and wringing their hands in prayer to the Above. Their faith in the sporting model across the pond was being sorely tested.

Playing for the most part without the ball, and without their full complement of 15 players for an hour, Bath were winning all the battles which mattered. On the day, West Country pluck and defensive diligence probably deserved a better reward.

It was an eerie reprise of so many high-profile finals in recent times: the Springboks at the last two World Cups, La Rochelle versus Leinster in two of the last three Champions Cup finals. Hell, even those connoisseurs of attacking elegance, Toulouse, overcame the Dublin giants with a paltry one-third ration of the ball in this year’s showpiece. On so many big occasions, defensive resilience on the day trumps attacking cohesion over the season.

Ex-England World Cup winner turned TNT Sports pundit Ben Kay was getting positively misty-eyed with nostalgia for a bygone era, both before and after the event. Before:

“There are huge similarities between Saracens [before they became good], and Bath over the last few seasons. [Both] have had a big-money backer that hasn’t had the return on his investment that you would have expected.

“Then suddenly, you put a South African coach [Johann van Graan, or Brendan Venter for Saracens] in there, who binds everything together and tries to make more of a family feel to the club and it very quickly starts to find success.

“I could see Bath in particular, going on from here. I make Northampton favourites, but I could see Bath – even if they lost this weekend – learning from that and kicking on for a number of years. It’s [more] difficult for Northampton because they’re losing such key players.”

Afterwards, Kay was already doubling down on his prediction.

“Despite losing today, I think Bath are right back at the top for the next few years and could become the team that dominates the Premiership. Sometimes you have to go to a final, and lose one, to realise what it’s all about. This team will stay here at the top.”

If the history of Bath and Leicester, John Hall versus Dean Richards and even Ben Kay’s very personal contest against Danny Grewcock are in the background, there is also a definite, if unspoken, sense defence [as well as forward play] wins championships. Just ask South Africa, and South African coaches such as Van Graan and Venter.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon at Twickenham, Bath did block most of the Saints’ attacking shots and they did make most of the steals at the breakdown. The game was played out the South African way, even in Beno Obano’s absence. Ball-in-play time was six minutes below the Premiership average at 32 minutes, 11 of Saints’ 19 set-piece launches ended in turnover, and the Midlanders only managed to string more than five phases together twice in the match. Those figures alone should have been enough to win Bath the silverware.

One of the most fascinating individual contests promised to be the battle between the two scrum-halves, England incumbent Alex Mitchell for Saints, and Bath’s Ben Spencer, who is also likely to feature on England’s visit to New Zealand in less than a month’s time. It distilled the essence of each side’s preparation for the final in a nutshell.

As Harlequins’ own ‘Yoda’ number nine Danny Care pointed out prophetically before the game:

“Ben Spencer is Bath’s captain but also the way he defends, he stands behind the ruck like he is ready to slow the [number] nine down.

“There is an England tour for him to try and get on as well, this is a huge game for him personally, and for the club.

“Somehow you have got to get a hold of Alex Mitchell and try and slow him down.”

Mitchell is the key cog in the Northampton’s tempo-building, fast-ruck programme on attack, so Bath began by using Spencer as a defensive ‘spy’ on his opposite number, shooting out from the boot of the ruck.

Spencer’s role is to act as an aggressive operator looking for espionage, to spoil or sabotage the link from the base. When he was unavailable to do the job, Finn Russell filled in for him instead.

By way of contrast, Spencer was under no pressure at all from his Northampton rival, and that allowed him all the time in the world to deploy Bath’s most effective attacking strategy on the day, the cross-kick to the wing.

Mitchell’s first instinct is to fan out laterally rather than attack straight upfield, so Spencer is already sitting in his armchair surveying the options under no pressure. In the second clip, Mitchell is well away from the scene of the action and the Bath half-back again has the freedom of the paddock to make his choice of play.

It was no coincidence Northampton’s attacking successes in the game materialised at the moments Spencer was unable to perform his designated role as harpy-in-chief.

Both of these second-phase strikes were set up by a punishing carry from Saints’ flankerTom Pearson deep into the Bath midfield, and in both cases Mitchell is blissfully unmolested at the base of the initial ruck, with his opposite number still stranded in the tram-lines from the lineout.

In the first clip, Mitchell runs the fake wrap to the blind-side around Courtney Lawes while Alex Waller adroitly walls off Obano’s replacement Juan Schoeman to lever open a hole for George Furbank.,

In the second, he engages the attention of the first three Bath forwards around the ruck before whipping the ball across to Fin Smith and the Saints’ outside backs on the left.

Spencer also went AWOL, through no fault of his own, for the decisive try of the game.

Russell is again doing his best Spencer impersonation at the first ruck, and that in turn pulls his centres further in towards the breakdown than they need to be to defend George Hendy on the wide right. Spencer is only just running back into shot when Mitchell joyfully accepts an inside pass from the galloping redhead to convert the winning try.

The story of Bath’s resurgence at the top of the English game may be a romantic tale to warm the tender hearts of all those who knew the club at the height of the late amateur and early professional eras, but the odds are the marketing strategists at Premiership Rugby would have preferred a Northampton title.

The Saints are the main standard-bearers for the attacking intent in the English game right now, having reached the last four in the Champions Cup and added the Premiership to their trophy cabinet. Hopefully that will translate to extra value in the next round of broadcasting negotiations, where there is huge ground to make up on the Top 14.

Mitchell and Spencer may very well find they are international team-mates this summer, and it will be up to Steve Borthwick to rediscover the balance between attack and defence. Defence may still win championships, but England badly need to sell tickets domestically and nationally. It is the American way, and that means it is the righteous route to sporting success.