It was a helter skelter night under the lights at Franklin’s Gardens, where Northampton beat Harlequins.
All the talk beforehand was about the showdown between England’s two likely fly-halves, Marcus Smith on one side and Fin Smith on the other. But in the end, Harlequins had so many injuries among their back three that Marcus ended up playing at full-back, so he was squaring off against George Furbank instead. It’s a bit of a disservice to everyone else on the pitch to frame the game that way, but the unavoidable truth is that in this sort of form Marcus Smith does have a way of sucking up all the attention.
Quins’ coach Danny Wilson was clear that he thinks Smith should first and foremost be thought of as a fly-half for club and country, and that he was only filling in at full-back because “needs must”.
Either way, he scored two tries, and set up a third. The problem being that the one he made was for the other side. Smith gathered a kick to the corner that had stopped just short of touch and decided to try to run his way out of trouble. He ended up running right back into it. He shot across the pitch like a startled rabbit looking for a lick of cover, and ended up being scragged right under the posts, where he was penalised for holding on to the ball. Saints’ Manny Iyogun drove his way over from the penalty.
Smith was back in the thick of it at the other end of the pitch just a moment later, when one of his characteristic hitch-kicks split the Saints’ defence open like a broken coconut. Smith made a fool of Tommy Freeman, who was left haring off in the wrong direction while Smith stepped back inside him.
Then he scored a second six minutes later with another smart finish, this one off a forward pass from Danny Care that the referee decided had clipped Freeman’s back. However it travelled, Smith caught it, and finished with a cute little curving run into the corner.
In between all that, Smith also scored a couple of conversions, and a penalty, which meant that he had 17 of the 22 points Quins scored in the first 40 minutes. The other five were by Jack Walker, who scored off a lineout drive after Saints conceded a penalty from the very first tackle of the match.
Quins could easily have had a fourth and fifth in the first half, but for a couple of telling interventions. Freeman stopped them once when he wrapped Will Joseph up in a tackle and rolled him over on to his back as he dived across the line, and Curtis Langdon killed another when he held up Lennox Anyanwu.
In among it all, Fin Smith was quietly competent. He makes a lot of deft passes, a lot of difficult tackles, and a lot of good decisions. He and Furbank set up a Saints’ second, when Ollie Sleightholme scored in the corner, but they were still eight points back at the interval.
It’s been the best part of a year since Saints last lost here and they came out hard after the interval,rocking Quins back on to their line from the restart with a series of short, sharp breaks down the middle of the pitch. The ball wound up with Sleightholme on the left wing, but he spilled it as he dived for the line when Nick David caught him in the head with his elbow.
David was given a yellow card, and Saints a penalty try. Which made it a one point game with half an hour left to play. It took them three goes to score a try while David was off, they were held up once, and knocked on another, but Sam Graham eventually battered his way over to put his side six-points up. Which became 11 when Furbank put Sleightholme through with a wonderful offload off the floor. Even then the fun wasn’t up. Will Porter scored for Quins as they scrambled to get back into the match, a ninth, and final, try in a ring-a-ding game.
