Ruthless Saints to show no mercy against an underperforming Quins
Another tough fixture lies in stall for the Northampton Saints this weekend, as they travel to Twickenham to face a determined Harlequins side. However, on paper there is only one winner, with the two sides experiencing a stark contrast in fortunes this season.
Northampton currently sit top of the table heading into the Christmas period and produced perhaps their most pleasing performance last weekend against bitter rivals, Leicester Tigers. Despite their captain, Dylan Hartley, getting sent off in the 17th minute, the home side managed to battle on and beat the Tigers 23-19.
People often say that it is those sort of games that win teams the championship, when you are not at your clinical best, but you still manage to grind out a victory. As a result, the momentum and confidence that will now be engraved into that Saints side will be immense.
For Harlequins, they couldn’t have really asked for a worse time to play the defending champions, and with the game being played at Twickenham, they don’t even have home advantage to fall back on. The crowd support at Twickers’ is likely to be fairly evenly distributed between the two sides, with a huge amount of Saints fans expected to make the journey.
Quins will have to produce their best rugby of the season to run Northampton close this weekend and even then it may not be enough. Their biggest challenge will be to try and restrict the amount of space and time players such as Luther Burrell have, who was exceptional last weekend against Leicester.
Statistics are also on the Saints side, with their winning streak now lasting since mid-November in all competitions and they haven’t lost to Harlequins now in their last three matches. They have also managed to concede the least points so far this season in the Premiership, with Harlequins currently placed ninth in the points scoring tables.
Expect another victory for Northampton against the London based club this weekend. This game should be much closer when analysing the team sheets, however, so far this season this has simply not been the case. A miss firing Quins side face a Saints team firing on all cylinders at the moment, a proposition that will be extremely intimidating come kick-off on Saturday.
Harlequins will likely put up a brave performance in the first half, but expect the away side to kick on with about twenty minutes to play and snatch victory away from a desperate looking Quins team low on confidence.
