Ainsworth-Cave, Pugh, St John, and Ulcoq all re-sign
I can see Ainsworth-Cave and Ulcoq getting some more minutes next year so really pleased they've signed on
u/smooothsides — 15 hours ago
u/smooothsides
Saints well represented amongst The Rugby Awards 2026 nominations
Freeman Nominated for Prem player of the year and England player of the year
McParland and Todaro for breakthrough player
Dows for DOR of the year
Tom James for community player of the year
u/smooothsides — 1 day ago
Saints - Bears player rating results
The results spreadsheet has once again been updated. Before i start the rating analysis a bit of a moan that's also a fun stat: Something I saw a lot of bristol fans blaming was their small squad and injuries meaning that their players played more minutes and so were just tired. I thought that sounded like a load of nonsense so I had a look at the minutes played by the starting 15's and Bristol had 18,083 minutes, Saints had 17,123. That's a difference of 960 minutes or 64 minutes per player, which really isn't enough to explain shipping 60 points in a half.
This was definitely more interesting to pull together than the last one, and unsuprisingly there's a few records being set for the highest overall ratings.
47 responses which is a new record too, there's always more when Saints win.
Archie McParland (31) wins Man of the Match with the most votes ever for a man of the match, with a single vote more than Freeman against Bath 2 weeks ago, it's also the biggest margin of victory (25 votes more than the closest competitior).
Alex Coles (6) is in second on his return from injury whilst Hendy's 4 tries is only good enough for third place.
Every player got at least 1 score of 10, which seems overly generous but i'm not filtering them out because the team scored 94 points so it would be too hash.
McParland also had the highest overall rating (9.59), beating Hendy's previous record of 9.44 off the bench against sarries in the cup. Coles also averaged 9.00. These are only the third and fourth average scores of 9 or more 9, the other being Callum Chick against Sale away.
Every starting back averaged over than 8, with Furbank the lowest (8.41)
It wasn't a great game for big locks, with Ed Prowse the lowest starter (7.11) and JJ Van der Mescht (6.87) the lowest rating overall.
Moment of the match goes the Freeman's break from the charge down, leading to McParlands try
u/smooothsides — 5 days ago
Tommy's tries
In celebration of Freeman getting the record for the most saints prem tries, I've pulled together a few quick stats that are slightly interesting:
- Freeman has played in 82 games, and scored 52 tries in those games, which is an average of 0.63 tries per game
- the current season is already the most prolific with 15 tries in 11 games, which is a ridiculous 1.36 tries per game, or averaging a try every 48 minutes he's on the pitch. 21/22 is the second highest with 13 tries, 0.93 tries per game.
- The only Prem team Freeman hasn't scored against is Wasps, who he likely never will now.
- Tommy has scored 10 tries against Bath, but before this season where he's had 2 hat tricks against them, they were very mid pack
- Against both Bristol and Newcastle, he's scored 6 in 6 games, making them the most likely team he is to score against.
- They're also the 2 teams he's scored in the highest percentage of games, scoring in two thirds of appearances against them
- Tommy has 4 prem hat tricks, 3 of which came this year against Saracens (4 tries), Bath, and Bath again. The only other hattrick was in June 2022 against Newcastle.
u/smooothsides — 11 days ago
Saints- Tigers player rating results
the results spreadsheet has once again been updated. 36 responses this week which is again good, although down to 32 once i removed 4 responses which gave pretty much everyone a score of 1, becuase it's just not representative. I think a couple were tigers fans, which is just a weird thing to do to be honest.
Freeman currently has a lead of 2 in the Man of the Match vote, the second week in a row which he's won the vote. This game had the most votes for opposition players, and the largest number of opposition players nominated, which says a lot about how the game went.
Kemeny is 2nd again, and Pollock got another vote which means they've continued their remarkable consistency and now had votes in 5 of the last 6 games.
Freeman (6.13) also has the highest average rating. Kemeny (6.03) is the only other rating above 6. Fin Smith (5.94) has the 3rd highest. No other player has an average rating higher than 5 which means that this is by far the lowest set of results this season.
The two hookers had the lowest (and nearly identical) average ratings. Robbie Smith (2.65) was slightly lower than Craig Wright (2.68).
Chunya Munga appears twice as it was too late to remove Tom Lockett, so i've just repeated Munga's scores in 4 and 20.
Unsuprisingly the end is a clear moment of the match winner.
I want to end on a slightly more optimistic note: Saints haven't lost 2 in a row this year, the last time they did was at the end of last year against Bordeaux and Gloucester which doesn't really count given the team sent to Gloucester. The last time before that was over a year ago, last March when Saints lost to Tigers 33-0 at home and then away to sharks 27-24 the week after
u/smooothsides — 12 days ago
Tom West, Fyn Brown, Will Glister, Emeka Atuanya, Billy Pasco, Marco Manfredi, Archie Appleby, Jack Lawrence and Siep Walta will leave the Club at the conclusion of the 2025/26 season
u/smooothsides — 22 days ago
The results spreadsheet 39 responses which is a very strong number, the highest it's been for a few weeks!
Tommy Freeman (28) absolutely dominates man of the match to win it for the first time, it's only the second time he's even recieved votes which seems like a suprise to me. Fin Smith recieves a vote for the 3rd match in a row which is a very impressive run of form. Josh Kemeny and Henry Pollock both recieve votes for the 4th game in the last 5.
Freeman (8.59) also has the highest average rating by some distance over Pollock (7.85). Smith (7.59), Kemeny (7.18) and Dingwall (7.13) are the only other players to average above 7.
There was a big lack of impact from the bench, JJ Van Der Mescht (6.39) had the highest rating amongst the replacements. Personally i thought Cleopas Kundiona (6.08) had a much better game than his average.
George Hendy (3.87) had the lowest average rating, this is also the lowest average seen across the season, a record Ollie Sleightholme (4.18 against Bordeaux would probably not care to be rid of if he knew this existed.
Moment of the match is currently tightly contested, but the game winning penalty is currently the leader.
u/smooothsides — 26 days ago