Northampton Saints boss Phil Dowson hails Tom Pearson after first Gallagher Premiership win - 'More to come'

Northampton Saints director of rugby Phil Dowson backed Tom Pearson to go from strength to strength after his piercing run helped The Saints score their one and only try as they won for the first time in this season’s Gallagher Premiership away to Newcastle Falcons.

Pearson joined The Saints from London Irish in the summer and was instrumental on a miserable day at Kingston Park, splitting the Newcastle defence before deftly offloading to Curtis Langdon to cross the line.

Northampton held on for a 16-14 victory and Dowson hailed the 24-year-old’s contribution that helped lift the club up from 10th to seventh in the Premiership table.

“Yeah, [he was] huge,” Dowson said, live on TNT Sports. “I think you can see last year in terms of the way he plays in terms of the ability that he has, and I think there's loads more to come as well.

“He obviously spent a long time with the World Cup squad with Borthers (England coach, Steve Borthwick), and they were very, very positive about what he can bring to the table.

“I think now it's just to get him playing regularly, enjoying his rugby again, and getting set up with The Saints. All those guys who came out the Irish squad are very talented and hugely ambitious.”

Northampton were on the wrong end of close matches against Sale and Bristol after letting opportunities to win slip.

However, in dreadful conditions, they converted their only proper try-scoring chance, while Fin Smith was deadly with the boot, slotting all three of his goal kicks and his conversion.

Pearson, who was forced to find a new club after the demise of London Irish, admitted it was “not the prettiest game” but hailed the Saints pack for dogging out the result.

“Looking at the forecast it was always going to be a bit of a scrap and that's what we came to do to be honest,” Pearson said.

“I think I’ve landed on my feet being at Saints, they play similar rugby to what we did at Irish, such a sad time but I’m happy at Saints and have settled in well.

“Nights like tonight are so important to get right. We know it's not going to be sunshine and rainbows in the next couple of months, so we’ve just got to be sensible with how we play and results like tonight, really dogging it out and the rains is important to us.

“It's something we've got to get used to. Really happy with the pack today, thought we brought it.”

Try-scorer Langdon also hailed the impact new defence coach Lee Radford has had on The Saints. Radford was the head coach of rugby league side Castleford Tigers and worked as Samoa’s defence coach at the Rugby League World Cup and has already made an impact in his switch to union.

“We worked hard on our defence in pres-eason [and] defence wins games, especially in weather like this and the boys put the right foot forward and very happy to get the first win of the season,” Langdon said.

“I think we’ve seen it in glimpses from the first few games of the season. A lot of chat this week about staying in that defensive system for the whole 80. We did that tonight.

“A few discipline issues that probably made it closer than we would have liked, but as a whole, probably our best 80-minute performance of the season.”

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