{"id":488234,"date":"2026-06-21T09:37:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T09:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/488234\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T09:37:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T09:37:10","slug":"northampton-saints-beat-exeter-in-prem-final-featuing-olivia-dean-and-other-talking-points","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/488234\/","title":{"rendered":"Northampton Saints beat Exeter in Prem final featuing Olivia Dean and other talking points"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fin Smith was only 12 years old at the time, but he will remember the thunderous viral hit put in by Saints legend Courtney Lawes on France fly-half Jules Plisson back in 2015., external<\/a><\/p>\n

On an adjacent patch of Twickenham pitch, Smith got a taste of something similar, being levelled by a flying Ethan Roots 25 minutes into the game., external<\/a><\/p>\n

No matter.<\/p>\n

Smith dusted himself down, got back to his feet and was undeterred in playing physical and flat to the line.<\/p>\n

He weighs in at less than 14 stone, but his appetite for the physical stuff is Jonny Wilkinson-esque at times.<\/p>\n

Six minutes after Roots’ shuddering shot, its victim was barging through Stephen Varney at short range for a try.<\/p>\n

Overall, he carried 12 times and made 13 tackles, putting him third-highest in the Northampton ranks for both categories.<\/p>\n

He made shrewd decisions, added momentum with ball in hand and was good off the tee, missing only a long-range penalty as his team wound down the clock, and a conversion from way out wide.<\/p>\n

The day before this final, fly-half rival George Ford had a mixed night for a mix-and-match England side in their warm-up against a France XV in Vannes.<\/p>\n

Smith is undoubtedly in pole position to be at 10 facing down the Springbok charge when England take on South Africa in their opening Test of the summer on 4 July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fin Smith was only 12 years old at the time, but he will remember the thunderous viral hit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-488234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}