In the heat of the summer holidays, Henry Pollock sprang a surprise on a couple of his team-mates in Mallorca.
Tommy Freeman and Fin Smith were visiting the Balearic Islands with their girlfriends and Pollock checked into a nearby hotel.
‘We decided to do a boat day on the Saturday,’ Freeman tells Daily Mail Sport. ‘Most rental boats are small and slow but Pollock was like, “I’ve got a boat licence, which means we can get a quicker one”. We rocked up and got this huge RIB.
‘As soon as we got out the harbour, Pollock was like, “Bang! Gone”. We were going very fast and it was pretty scary. It was a good laugh. My hat fell off about three times and we had to loop back around for it.’
Pollock took the group around the south of the island, stopping off at a beachside restaurant for lunch.
It was around the time that Eddie Hearn, Pollock’s promotional agent, had made headlines by claiming the 21-year-old’s annual salary should multiply from £150,000 to £1million.
Northampton are ready for another strong season in the PREM, boosted by news that Henry Pollock has agreed a new contract
Pollock (left), Tommy Freeman and Fin Smith (right) soaked up the sun together in Mallorca – though had a distressing boat ride thanks to the England flanker
‘He got an earful about all the Hearn stuff,’ says Freeman. ‘Obviously there’s a plan behind it all, but there’s always a bit of stick, isn’t there? It’s all good stuff. I might get my agent to come out and say I need a million, too!’
Pollock settled on a contract worth around £450,000. Despite the headlines, Hearn is yet to visit Franklin’s Gardens or the Northampton hierarchy.
Pollock discussed his ambitions with director of rugby Phil Dowson during the off-season – but the bulk of the negotiations were between recruitment boss Paul Shields and Stellar Rugby.
Locking down the youngster’s future was just one piece of Northampton’s business plan for the new season.
The club sold out 90 per cent of their PREM fixtures last season, thanks largely to the team’s effective and entertaining style of play.
Work is going on behind the scenes to achieve long-term sustainability. It is not feasible to expand the capacity of Franklin’s Gardens but the Supporter Village has been redeveloped over the summer, with enhanced facilities that can double up for corporate events.
There are also plans to move the team’s performance facilities out of the South Stand to create more space for commercial activity.
Coupled with a long-term vision to build a hotel on site, the club’s executives have been looking at matters far beyond Pollock’s contract extension.
The coaching team, Dowson and Sam Vesty, are tied into long-term deals and the RFU would have to pay a hefty fee to buy them out for potential roles with England.
‘Fundamentally, we are having a great time at Northampton,’ says director of rugby Phil Dowson
‘We want to build a legacy,’ says Alex Mitchell. ‘We know we’ve got the squad and the coaches and the environment to do it. So why not go out and try to dominate?’
‘Fundamentally, we are having a great time at Northampton,’ says Dowson, when asked about the prospect of coaching England in the future.
‘We talk about the club flourishing, selling out, the village being renovated, the Saints Foundation having an impact in the community. From a personal point of view, at some point we would like to coach in international rugby because it is different.
‘Rugby’s different from the NFL. Bill Belichick stays at the New England Patriots because he’s got nowhere else. There’s no timeline on that.
‘It’s not just England. There’s the opportunity to go and do something different, to test ourselves, either as a team or individually, to put ourselves under different pressure and to have new experiences.’
The immediate goal, however, is to secure back-to-back titles. In-house sports psychologist Oli Dixon has worked closely with the players to guard against complacency.
The club enjoyed a pre-season trip to Sri Lanka, where the new playing group bonded in unfamiliar surroundings. ‘All of the players went out for dinner together at a restaurant in Colombo,’ says scrum-half Alex Mitchell. ‘It was mainly curries. So spicy. Took my head off!
‘Fraser Dingwall started a conversation about how few teams have been able to go back-to-back. Saracens did it. We spoke about Wasps doing it with Lawrence Dallaglio and those guys. You look back on those teams and think, “What a team they were”. It’s a tough thing to do.
‘It would be quite cool if in 10 or 15 years, people look back at Northampton in the mid-2020s and say, “Oh, what a team they were”. That’s what we want to get after. We want to build a legacy. We know we’ve got the squad and the coaches and the environment to do it. So why not go out and try to go back-to-back and actually dominate?’
The club are already one of the finest attacking forces in Europe, often described as the All Blacks of English club rugby.
But they were presented with a humbling statistic over the summer: discipline. It is something they are looking to improve when they kick-off their campaign against Newcastle.
With the likes of Smith in their ranks, Northampton have become renowned as one of the finest attacking sides in Europe
Scrum-half Mitchell admits Saints’ discipline is one of the few areas where they can improve
‘We were 10th for discipline,’ reveals Mitchell. ‘Penalties against us. We were 10th by quite some way, so that’s one thing we want to try and rectify this year. We know we need to get better at not giving teams easy ins into our 22. Offsides, chat back, silly pens.’
The coaching team remains stable, although Jim Henry has moved into the role of defence coach, following Lee Radford’s departure to Scotland. Henry previously coached at Loughborough University, where he worked as a part-time doorman to supplement his sporting career.
‘Fundamentally, it’s not a revolution,’ said Dowson. ‘It’s an evolution of what Lee was doing. Lee came in and set a stall out in terms of our system and he set a stall out with an emotional point of view on what it means to defend. Jim’s carried on both of those things. We just want to create a bit more pressure in defence. We want to create more turnovers.
‘We’re probably defending for too long in phase counts. We want to get the ball back a little bit quicker. We want to have a bit more of an effort around post-tackle. You look at South Africa play, you look at Bordeaux, you look at Toulouse. Those two men on the tackle are making it tough to win fast ball and I think that’s something that we can get better at.’
If Northampton can find another level after their title-winning campaign, they will prove difficult to stop.
