Title-winner back Northampton Saints to give departing stars 'massive send-off'
Donovan Blake caught up with Saints past and present to get their thoughts on Saturday's final
A member of Northampton Saints' last Premiership-winning team has backed this year's team to follow in his footsteps, as they prepare to take on Bath in the final on Saturday.
Mike Haywood retired at the end of last season but still has strong links with the current squad, and believes there are echoes of the 2014 vintage.
Saints - made up of survivors of that last victory, bolstered with the energy of academy graduates - will take on Bath at Twickenham at 3pm on Saturday to decide the Premiership title.
Speaking to ITV News Anglia at a youth coaching session in Suffolk, Haywood said: “The last two years they’ve been spoken about as a team that is young and developing, whereas now they are a team that want to take the opportunity.
"There are 16 guys leaving [at the end of the season] that have been a massive part of that squad. They want to make sure they give them a massive send-off.”
One of those players is Alex Waller, a try-scoring hero at Twickenham to help secure that first title at the expense of Saracens a decade ago.
Another is Tom Wood, who feels the emergence of the current squad has followed a similar path of a decade earlier.“We’d really been on a four or five-year journey, and suffered a fair bit of pain and heartache along the way and been nearly men for a long time.
"So 2014 was really the finale of that journey, and kind of the reward we’d been seeking for four or five years."
Full-back George Furbank said he and his team-mates are keen to live up to the expectations.
"We've been in the last four or five semi-finals and have not given ourselves a shot to make it to a final and lift a trophy. And now we've done that and now we're really excited to get there."
Last week's semi-final win over Saracens prompted another rendition of the Saints post-match dressing-room anthem - a ritual that Tommy Freeman says has brought the squad together.
“I think it's awesome, to have everyone on board with it," he said.
"And I think it's definitely brought the team closer and celebrating wins and things like that. It's definitely helped us."
While most attention has been paid to those performing on the field, the man in charge and guiding the coaching, Phil Dowson, has the opportunity to join a select group by winning the Premiership as both a player and director of rugby.
Wood adds: “It must be awkward for him sometimes because he’s still dealing with mates, guys he played with. [It's] difficult to have those tough conversations, contractually and other things, and to make some of those tough calls has probably been a challenge throughout the last couple of years.
"But he’s obviously doing a good job, he must be getting something right.”
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