Maro Itoje double leads Saracens to dominant win at Bristol | Premiership

Northampton’s director of rugby Phil Dowson said he had some sympathy for Gloucester after the league leaders’ record 90-0 win secured a home semi-final. Ninth-placed Gloucester showed where their priorities lie by making 12 changes to the team that beat Benetton in the semi-finals of the Challenge Cup last week, and their makeshift line-up was ripped to shreds.

Northampton ran in 14 tries to amass the biggest win in the Premiership, the highest points total by a home team in the history of the competition and the second biggest margin of victory. Their extraordinary score is only surpassed in the Premiership by Richmond’s 106-12 thrashing of Bedford in May 1999.

“It’s never nice to be on the end of a 90-0 hump, but at the same time we had a job to do,” Dowson said. “I wanted to push the players to really stay focused on what it was and not get too distracted by the score. So you have to take it and we’ve all been there. We’ve all been at the end of games like that and you learn a lot about yourself and a lot about your team.”

Ollie Sleightholme scored a hat-trick for Northampton, whose other tries came from George Furbank, Fraser Dingwall, Curtis Langdon (2), Alex Mitchell, Alex Waller, Sam Matavesi (2), Emmanuel Iyogun, Alex Moon and Tom James.

Gloucester head coach George Skivington said: “I thought it might be a tough score today when I saw the team he picked. We knew the momentum was going to go against us at some point and it was going to be hard to get back, but that was extremely painful.” PA Media