'A very good start' - Dowson reflects on season-opening success at Saracens

Callum Chick scored a hat-trick on his debut, while JJ van der Mescht also dotted down on his first appearance for the black, green and gold.

James Ramm rounded things off with two second-half tries to ensure Saints would head home with five points in the bag.

And Dowson said: "It was a very good start.

"We spoke earlier in the week about there still being an element of pre-season about it, trying to manage minutes with people like Trev (Davison) coming back in and not overplaying people, but, on the whole, the performance was still very good.

"There's clearly things we still need to work on, but we're very happy with it.

"There's no such thing as the perfect performance, there's loads of things we can be better at and it's great experience for some of our young guys to come here and get the win.

"I'm delighted for Callum Chick as well in his first outing as captain to get a hat-trick and a win as well is a pretty good experience all round and we'll take loads from that into next week."

Discussing South African lock van der Mescht's 30-minute appearance, Dowson said: "He has huge impact on the game, both at set piece and carrying the ball.

"We'll continue to work with him to make sure we get him in the game as much as possible.

"JJ's first outing in a Saints shirt has been excellent and we look forward to many more."

Summer signing Anthony Belleau was very impressive once again at fly-half for Saints.

And Dowson said: "I thought he played very well.

"I thought he kicked particularly well and he got a turnover at the end of the game, which shows how tenacious he is as well.

"There's obviously stuff he needs to work on from an organisational point of view and how we play the game, which he's still adapting to because it's a tough position to play, particularly in your second language, but he's coming on leaps and bounds every week.

"We're delighted with his performance."

On what he felt Saints could have done better against Saracens, Dowson said: "We could have moved the ball a bit more.

"Sam (Vesty) said at half-time that we could maybe have moved it a bit more and get to the outside channels, but it's all part and parcel of pre-season and finding out which part of our game needs work and where we're at under pressure."