Dowson outlines Saints' main motivation ahead of new season
Last summer, Saints turned up to pre-season training with two main aims: to be more consistent and to sort our their Gallagher PREM away form.
The 2024/25 campaign saw their title defence fall flat as a huge number of injuries cost them dear.
The finished the season down in eighth, but they did manage to make it to the Investec Champions Cup final, before and during which injuries again hit them hard.
They picked themselves up last summer, rallying superbly as they went on to top the PREM table and lift the trophy back in June.
So, as a new campaign edges ever closer, what are the main motivating factors this summer?
"The big thing is how do we learn the lessons from 2024/25?" said Saints boss Phil Dowson.
"We won the league in 2024 and then we lost some key individuals from that group so it's about how quickly we can accelerate some of the leadership models in our environment.
"It's about how quickly we can evolve our game.
"Playing as champions is a slightly different pressure and it's about how we deal with that.
"There are loads of different elements.
"It's maybe not as cut and dried as it was last year but there's definitely things we can be better at, and we'll have to be with the target we have on our backs."
Dowson was delighted with the way Saints responded to their below-par league campaign in 2024/25.
When asked what pleased him most about last season's success story, he said: "There were a couple of things that we went after from the year before when we had a great (European) cup run but weren't consistent enough in the league.
"We got some good experience for our younger players at the back end of that (2024/25) season.
"The two things we went after were that we hadn't performed well enough away from home and we hadn't been consistent enough.
"Those two things were outstanding last season because week to week we produced really good quality performances, and playing away from home we were excellent.