Belleau holds nerve to deny Gloucester's comeback for the ages

For the second game in a row, Northampton tore their opponents to shreds in the first half only to capitulate in the second. Last week they blew a 33-7 lead to draw with Exeter. This time they responded, claiming a nervy 37-35 win over a resurgent Gloucester, narrowly denying them what would have been the largest ever comeback win in English domestic rugby.

- Daniel Gallan

“It was a carbon copy, almost,” Phil Dowson, Northampton’s director of rugby, said with a mix of relief and frustration. “We lost momentum and discipline. We were poor for large periods. The same thing is happening.”

The idea of a contest was a fantasy midway through a game that would have required binoculars to be viewed from the southern end of the ground, where only 13 of the 72 points were scored. If Gloucester were poor in the opening exchanges, conceding four tries in 35 minutes, they were magnificent thereafter, dotting down five times.

The home side had the lead with only eight minutes to go when the prop Afolabi Fasogbon scored with a splash that would have made Chris Ashton proud. But the home fans’ joy was ripped away when the fly-half Ross Byrne was harshly sent to the sin-bin for a deliberate knock-on. “Rough,” is how Gloucester’s director of rugby, George Skivington, termed the decisive decision. Anthony Belleau’s penalty from the left tram proved the difference.