r/NorthamptonSaintsRFC

Northampton Saints are understood to have tabled an early contract offer to England winger Tommy Freeman, who will be entering the final year of his contract at Franklin’s Gardens later this summer.

Freeman, who scored his 20th try in 22 appearances for club and country this season during yesterday’s thrashing against arch-rivals Leicester Tigers at Welford Road, has scored 75 in 115 games for Saints.

The indications are that talks are going well, no problems are anticipated at this stage, and they could be successfully concluded before the end of the season, as Saints seek to avoid him being able to talk to rival clubs in July.

In celebration of Freeman getting the record for the most saints prem tries, I've pulled together a few quick stats that are slightly interesting:

• Freeman has played in 82 games, and scored 52 tries in those games, which is an average of 0.63 tries per game
• the current season is already the most prolific with 15 tries in 11 games, which is a ridiculous 1.36 tries per game, or averaging a try every 48 minutes he's on the pitch. 21/22 is the second highest with 13 tries, 0.93 tries per game.

https://preview.redd.it/1yo2owvsqo0h1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=7fed348c34028515685f9a6149cf4241f75c33a3

• The only Prem team Freeman hasn't scored against is Wasps, who he likely never will now.
• Tommy has scored 10 tries against Bath, but before this season where he's had 2 hat tricks against them, they were very mid pack
• Against both Bristol and Newcastle, he's scored 6 in 6 games, making them the most likely team he is to score against.
• They're also the 2 teams he's scored in the highest percentage of games, scoring in two thirds of appearances against them
• Tommy has 4 prem hat tricks, 3 of which came this year against Saracens (4 tries), Bath, and Bath again. The only other hattrick was in June 2022 against Newcastle.

the results spreadsheet has once again been updated. 36 responses this week which is again good, although down to 32 once i removed 4 responses which gave pretty much everyone a score of 1, becuase it's just not representative. I think a couple were tigers fans, which is just a weird thing to do to be honest.

https://preview.redd.it/hhpxocnkth0h1.png?width=1428&format=png&auto=webp&s=2e57fc31d9c815c6a674d0f40afc9ca332f40743

Freeman currently has a lead of 2 in the Man of the Match vote, the second week in a row which he's won the vote. This game had the most votes for opposition players, and the largest number of opposition players nominated, which says a lot about how the game went.

Kemeny is 2nd again, and Pollock got another vote which means they've continued their remarkable consistency and now had votes in 5 of the last 6 games.

https://preview.redd.it/y8gsofh8uh0h1.png?width=1756&format=png&auto=webp&s=e53ecdda5df6263919d05a1560cf6abf26ea403a

Freeman (6.13) also has the highest average rating. Kemeny (6.03) is the only other rating above 6. Fin Smith (5.94) has the 3rd highest. No other player has an average rating higher than 5 which means that this is by far the lowest set of results this season.

The two hookers had the lowest (and nearly identical) average ratings. Robbie Smith (2.65) was slightly lower than Craig Wright (2.68).

Chunya Munga appears twice as it was too late to remove Tom Lockett, so i've just repeated Munga's scores in 4 and 20.

https://preview.redd.it/btqbswb3vh0h1.png?width=1730&format=png&auto=webp&s=2368119bba079e2164a37065ac205728c82c8fe4

Unsuprisingly the end is a clear moment of the match winner.

I want to end on a slightly more optimistic note: Saints haven't lost 2 in a row this year, the last time they did was at the end of last year against Bordeaux and Gloucester which doesn't really count given the team sent to Gloucester. The last time before that was over a year ago, last March when Saints lost to Tigers 33-0 at home and then away to sharks 27-24 the week after

Fischetti was a bit of an unusual signing for Saints, it's not often we bring in players of his calibre and I was very excited to see a big name signing in the front row. However, it feels to me like, with the exception of a couple of standout performances, we haven't seen the best of him in a Saints shirt.

Fischetti was part of the Italy front row that had a massively successful scrum in the 6N, but for Saints, I'd say Iyogun has him squarely beaten as first choice loosehead this season. This post isn't to say that Fischetti hasn't been good for us this season, moreso that he just hasn't been quite what I expected from a starting international front rower. Is there something about the way Saints scrum or perhaps about scrummaging in the Prem in general or should the question be, is Iyogun the most underrated prop in the country?

I was expecting big things from Saints scrum this season with Fischetti in the front row and with the weight of VDM in the engine room, but whilst our scrum has been decent, it's not been an area of particular strength any more than recent seasons.