Dowson 'nervous' ahead of Saints' clash with 'incredibly dangerous' Harlequins

The black, green and gold will host a Quins team who have suffered two humbling Gallagher PREM defeats in succession, losing 40-14 to Bristol Bears at Allianz Stadium before being beaten 43-17 at Sale Sharks last Friday.

But prior to that, Quins had racked up a huge 68-14 Investec Champions Cup win against Bayonne so it is clear that they can cause real problems for sides.

And when asked about this weekend's PREM encounter at a sold-out cinch Stadium at Franklin's Gardens, Dowson, who steered his heavily rotated team to a memorable 41-21 victory at Bath last Saturday, said: "I'm nervous about it.

"The narrative last week was that Bath were the form horse and we were not going to be competitive in that game because of the selection, but the narrative has flipped now.

"Quins are a very, very dangerous side, they'll be hugely disappointed with the last two weekends and they'll be talking about what they need to do and how they want to be seen and what they want to be going after.

"I'm nervous about that because I know they're such a dangerous side.

"I know a lot of those individuals within that group in terms of how good they are and what good characters they are.

"They'll be wounded and that makes them incredibly dangerous."

After last weekend's loss at Sale, Harlequins senior coach Jason Gilmore said: "In terms of what we've got with the squad, we need to look at that. Obviously the PREM's gone for us. (It’s about) how we frame it for the rest of the year so we make sure we're getting something out of it to set us up for the PREM, and Europe, we're in with a shot still so we'll go heavy there."

So what did Dowson make to those comments about the PREM being gone for Quins?

"It's not anything we've really focused on," the Saints boss said.

"We have to deal with whatever comes and I'm sure the depth of their squad is strong enough to challenge on both fronts.

"I'll wait to see what their selection is but it doesn't impact how we want to perform and execute our game."

Saints scored six tries as they saw off champions Bath in their own backyard last Saturday.

And Dowson said: "It was very good. We're immensely proud of that playing group and how they went about their work.

"It obviously makes coming into work this week really enjoyable, buzzing, and the lads who have had some time off are obviously keen to get stuck in as well so we're in good shape but we also know what we need to get set and get ready for.

"We'll worry less about the result and more about where that performance came from, and whether we can emulate it and repeat it."

With Christmas Day falling in the week of the Bath game, Saints had to structure things slightly differently.

But Dowson feels his side's preparations would have been easier than they were for Bath, who had one day less to get ready for the big PREM battle.

"If I'm honest, I think it (Saints' preparation) was probably better than Bath's based on the timing of it because they played on the Sunday and then couldn't train on the Monday whereas we played on the Saturday so we could train Monday and Tuesday and then have Wednesday and Thursday off. We just had a short session on the Friday.

"They had a disrupted week more than we did from a Christmas point of view and sometimes that's what happens and we took advantage of it.

"I thought the training day we had on the Tuesday was outstanding because we really went for it, we made a ton of errors, we got things wrong but at the same time I thought we cleaned up on that on the Friday and got ready for the Saturday.

"We trained here on the Friday briefly to sharpen the knife, headed down to Bath and had a Christmas quiz in Bath."

Saints saw three tries ruled out in the game at Bath, but they didn't let it stop them claiming a sensational success.

"We had a setback in the first few minutes where we had a disallowed try, and whether it should have been allowed or not is irrelevant, and they went on to score immediately so it was a 14-point swing which could have had an impact," Dowson said.

"So I thought our resilience was excellent, we dealt with that setback really well and we continued to try to push and go after what we targeted."