Northampton Saints to give ‘fans a taste’ of season to come as they host Exeter Chiefs

Northampton Saints prop Emmanuel Iyogun believes that the crowd will make “a massive difference” as they host Exeter Chiefs in their first home game of the Premiership season on Saturday.

“Being at home, hopefully it will be a sell-out performance, we relish that,” Iyogun told The Saints Show podcast.

“This training week has been intense and there’s definitely a desire to give the fans a taste of what we want to produce consistently this season.”

Both teams lost their opening games of the new season but the Saints are still weary of the threat their opponents can produce.

“Exeter are a very promising team; they are very similar in terms of they are a very young team and they’ve got something to prove,” Iyogun added.

“We are not taking them for granted, we are taking them very seriously.

“They’ve got the grunt and the electric on the wings.”

Saints are going into this season as the reigning champions but their start was less than ideal after conceding five tries against Bath.

The loss puts the East Midlands team bottom of the Premiership with a -22 points difference.

A key area the Saints will want to utilise as they go searching for glory again this season is their scrum – something that Iyogun said can set them apart from the opposition.

“We want to do everything that previously was done in terms of being aggressive in a set-piece – but in terms of adjusting to our game, we want to be a dynamic scrum,” he said.

“Our scrum message this year is being a scrum that’s the fittest, being able to contribute to areas of the park that other props and scrums don’t.

“That’s a big responsibility on us in terms of having to do everything that oppositions props do and more.”

Northampton Saints v Exeter Chiefs kicks off at Franklin’s Garden on Saturday at 17:30 BST.