{"id":209560,"date":"2025-10-18T20:31:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T20:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/209560\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T20:31:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T20:31:18","slug":"dowson-reflects-on-saints-hard-fought-win-after-van-der-mescht-sees-red","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/209560\/","title":{"rendered":"Dowson reflects on Saints\u2019 hard-fought win after Van der Mescht sees red"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Northampton<\/a> director of rugby Phil Dowson<\/a> admitted his side \u201clet Newcastle<\/a> in\u201d at times during their 36-19 Gallagher Prem victory at Kingston Park.<\/p>\n

A positive start saw JJ van der Mescht<\/a> and Alex Mitchell<\/a> score for Saints before Oli Spencer and Amanaki Mafi<\/a> responded either side of a Van der Mescht yellow card.<\/p>\n

Tommy Freeman scored on the stroke of half-time for the visitors but they were handed another blow when Van der Mescht was shown a second yellow, resulting in a 20-minute red card at the start of the second half.<\/p>\n

Stefan Coetzee pulled one back for Newcastle but Saints saw the game out when Edoardo Todaro<\/a> and Alex Coles<\/a> crossed either side of Fin Smith\u2019s penalty.<\/p>\n

Newcastle entered the game on the back of a bruising 57-5 defeat to Sale<\/a> last weekend and Dowson knew his side would face a tough test at Kingston Park.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cI sat this time last week watching Sale against Newcastle and I was a little bit frustrated because I knew there\u2019d be a huge reaction from Newcastle this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cLots of players who are finding their feet in the Newcastle system and I knew they\u2019d be so much better this week and have a real point to prove.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought we started very well, but there\u2019s lots of very good players in that Newcastle side.<\/p>\n

\"Team Match Summary \"Team <\/p>\n

\u201cWe struggled to put our game together for long periods of time and our discipline was poor, which let them in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked for his thoughts on Van der Mescht\u2019s red card, Dowson added: \u201cIf they make those decisions that technically JJ was cynical and a yellow card in the first half for a lineout offence, then if (the second) was deemed a high tackle, then they\u2019re well within their rights to do that.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy concern was they spent a lot of time checking that and didn\u2019t check a tip tackle on Tommy Freeman<\/a>, or did they? It\u2019s hard to know from a communication point of view.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very happy for people to check and TMO to come in, for things to be looked after from a safety point of view. But if you\u2019re going to check that, you have to check everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newcastle slipped to their fourth defeat of the campaign, leaving them at the foot of the table.<\/p>\n

Boeta Chamberlain\u2019s game-levelling try was disallowed before Saints stormed ahead, but head coach Alan Dickens believes it was a more \u201cpositive\u201d display than last week\u2019s defeat.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cWe saw today it was a much better performance. Being picky, the try right on half-time was disappointing to concede that.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgain, the character and the way that the lads stuck together for 80 minutes was a positive against a team that lost in the Champions Cup last season.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve talked about cohesion in the last few weeks, they\u2019re a team who\u2019ve been together seven, eight years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it was documented in the week, we talked about the kind of Northampton model \u2013 building from within, building from the academy, it\u2019s something we\u2019re looking to do here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Northampton director of rugby Phil Dowson admitted his side \u201clet Newcastle in\u201d at times during their 36-19 Gallagher…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-209560","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}