Northampton

Northampton Saints’ Tommy Freeman told BBC Radio Northampton:

“Good start and lots of points on the board which good to see but I think there is loads more in us which is what we said at half-time, but overall a good result.

“Our set piece we need to tighten up a bit on that first phase. Defensively we were caught a bit tight, but credit to Newcastle for stressing us in those areas but we would like to see better movement.

“It is always a challenge and going back-to-back [titles] is not done by many teams. There is a reason for that but we will be looking to take each week as it comes and keep putting our DNA on the pitch.”

Newcastle head coach Dan McFarland told BBC Radio Newcastle:

“We put a lot of good stuff out there but we were tested today by a really, really good team. We know where we stand now and where we’ve got to work. We have a long jounrey ahead of us and that was the first step.

“It was a fantastic score when we had a length of the field try and that was really us and we also had a lot of defensive sets where we had showed really good scramble and stopped them from scoring.

“But the game is up and down. We had that yellow card and then we had three tries which were scored during that yellow, and the try just before half-time was a real killer.

“Maybe we left a couple of tries out there but there is plenty in that that we will take away and see as a real positive.”

Northampton: Pater, Freeman, Hutchinson, Dingwall, Hendy, F Smith, McParland, Iyogun, Langdon, Kundiona, Coles, Prowse, Kemeny, Pollock, Chick

Replacements: R Smith, Fischetti, Neculai, Lockett, Taylor, Mitchell, Belleau, Sleightholme.

Newcastle: Obatoyinbo, Wade, Hearle, Harris, Kok, Connon, Elliott, Rakete-Stones, McGuigan, Millar Mills, Usher, Jordan, Hicks, Christie, Graham.

Replacements: Fletcher, West, Harper, Molina, Leatherbarrow, Cruz, Henry, Sotutu.

Sin bin: Obatoyinbo (14), Rakete-Stones (43)

Referee: Anthony Woodthorpe.

Henry Pollock has brought an end to his contract stand-off with Northampton, saying it was ultimately “a very easy decision” to sign an extension with the defending Prem champions.

“I am very, very happy to sign here,” Pollock told BBC Radio Northampton.

“I have been here my whole career so it made sense for me to stay on the journey with such a young group of players, who are so ambitious.

“It was a very easy decision in the end.”

The 21-year-old, whose profile has exploded over the past two seasons after appearing for England and the British and Irish Lions, had been talked up as a “seven-figure player” during negotiations by his advisor Eddie Hearn.

However, the boxing promoter’s valuation was never likely to be met at Northampton or elsewhere in the Prem, given Saints’ star-studded line-up, the league’s £6.4m squad salary cap and rules over players moving between clubs.

The exact level of Pollock’s pay increase is unclear. While some sources have valued his new contract at £400,000 a year, others involved in the deal say the figure is higher.

It is certainly short of Scotland playmaker Finn Russell, who, as Bath’s marquee player, is on the league’s most lucrative package, worth about £1m a year.

Pollock’s pay puts him well ahead of most of his contemporaries in the Prem however.

His new deal is comfortably ahead of the average annual salary in the league (£191,000), the average earned by someone in his 20-22 age bracket (£106,000) and with his level of international experience (£224,000), as revealed by the latest league payroll data, covering the 2024-25 campaign., external

Only 4% of Prem players that season were paid in excess of £400,000 a year.

Pollock’s previous contract, signed in December 2024, is understood to have been worth about £150,000.