However, Dowson insists his side were not drawing motivation from that defeat.<\/p>\n
“I think you’re always going to be disappointed after a final and they have the privilege to celebrate however they want to,” he told BBC Radio Northampton.<\/p>\n
“I gave them kudos and credit in the post-match interview and I still would do that and we’ve got to make sure we prepare for this game and not re-analyse that one.”<\/p>\n
Northampton’s run to last year’s final was built on famous away-day victories, beating South African side Bulls at altitude in Pretoria in the pool stages<\/a> before upsetting Leinster at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium.<\/a><\/p>\n Bordeaux Begles have won seven of their eight home games this season, and start the game as favourites with the bookmakers.<\/p>\n However, Northampton back Tommy Freeman says his side want to modify their underdog mindset and a reputation for a style based mainly on running rugby.<\/p>\n “I had a conversation earlier with Ollie, our sports psychologist about the perception we give or we’re giving,” the 24-year-old England international said.<\/p>\n “We’ve always had the young card – we’ve got young players, promising players – and the narrative’s got to change. We are what we are and we’re physical.<\/p>\n “You’ve seen that over the last few weeks, how physical the forwards are.<\/p>\n “We get that underdog status probably a bit too much. We are trying to change the narrative so its’ ‘we’re the big dogs and this is what we’re going to do’.<\/p>\n “We need to puff our chests out and rip in.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"However, Dowson insists his side were not drawing motivation from that defeat. “I think you’re always going to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-400289","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}