Bath Rugby v Northampton Saints team news: Both directors of rugby opt for consistency

Consistency is everything for Bath Rugby as they head to Twickenham on Saturday to take on Northampton Saints in the Gallagher Premiership final and head of rugby Johann van Graan has been able to name an unchanged XV from the side that beat Sale Sharks 31-23 in the semi-final.

Table toppers Northampton beat Saracens 22-20 in their home semi-final to advance to the big dance and their director of rugby Phil Dowson has also remarkably been able to name an unchanged matchday 23.

READ MORE: Northampton Saints v Bath Rugby LIVE play-by-play updates from Twickenham

Northampton head into the game as marginal favourites with the bookies, having narrowly finished top of the table, but intriguingly they have not won away from Franklin's Gardens since January, getting thrashed 52-21 by Bristol Bears at Ashton Gate, before narrowly losing 20-17 to Leinster in the semi-final of the Champions Cup at Croke Park and then going down 41-32 to Harlequins at Twickenham in April. A second-string Saints side then lost 43-12 to Bath at the Rec on the final day of the regular season. Far from brilliant form on the road since the Six Nations break.

Dowson said: "There's clearly elements of our game we need to get right in terms of facing Bath, but there's also the fact you're playing a final and it's about how you manage that anticipation, nervousness, pressure. All those elements are part of it and it's something we've talked about.

"We've had experience of playing at Twickenham earlier this season against Quins, when we didn't quite get it right.

"We played against Leinster at Croke Park, we had that experience of pressure knockout games. The Leinster experience was great and you'd love to have it again with the lessons you learn from that game. Leinster were incredibly well prepared for us, as Bath will be, so it's about how we manage that, how we manage the expectation and the nerves of that.

"They'll want to put their game on the pitch and it's how we manage that pressure really."

Meanwhile, Bath boss van Graan says he has full respect for Northampton but has spent the week concentrating on getting the best out of his side.

He said: "We played Northampton a few weeks ago and it's a team that we respect a lot. We understand what threats they have in their team, but what we've done really well the last two seasons is understand how we want to play and how we want to do things; so we've given Northampton all the respect that they deserve, but this last week has been pretty much about ourselves and how can we improve from our performance against Sale."

Team news

Northampton Saints: 15 George Furbank, 14 Tommy Freeman, 13 Burger Odendaal, 12 Fraser Dingwall, 11 Ollie Sleightholme, 10 Fin Smith, 9 Alex Mitchell, 1 Alex Waller, 2 Curtis Langdon, 3 Trevor Davison, 4 Alex Moon, 5 Alex Coles, 6 Courtney Lawes (c), 7 Tom Pearson, 8 Juarno Augustus

Replacements: 16 Sam Matavesi, 17 Emmanuel Iyogun, 18 Elliot Millar Mills, 19 Temo Mayanavanua, 20 Sam Graham, 21 Lewis Ludlam, 22 Tom James, 23 George Hendy

Bath Rugby: 15 Matt Gallagher, 14 Joe Cokanasiga, 13 Ollie Lawrence, 12 Cameron Redpath, 11 Will Muir, 10 Finn Russell, 9 Ben Spencer (c); 1 Beno Obano, 2 Tom Dunn, 3 Thomas du Toit, 4 Quinn Roux, 5 Charlie Ewels, 6 Ted Hill, 7 Sam Underhill, 8 Alfie Barbeary

Replacements: 16 Niall Annett, 17 Juan Schoeman, 18 Will Stuart, 19 Elliott Stooke, 20 Josh Bayliss, 21 Louis Schreuder, 22 Orlando Bailey, 23 Miles Reid

Officials:

Referee: Christophe Ridley

Assistant Referees: Luke Pearce and Anthony Woodthorpe

TMO: Tom Foley