Saints farewell interview: Mike Haywood

A total of 269 appearances, 34 tries and starts in both finals the year the black, green and gold delivered an incredible Premiership and European Challenge Cup double - the loquacious hooker's influence on the club was clear.

However, though he has now retired, having been a Saintsman throughout his professional career, his impact behind the scenes may continue to be felt.

That is because Haywood has taken up a role as a coach at St Joseph's College, a day and boarding school in Ipswich that has developed a habit of delivering players to Saints.

The likes of Manny Iyogun and current Northampton captain Lewis Ludlam have been through the doors at St Jo's, and with Haywood's experience and help, there may be many more to follow in the coming years.

"I did quite a lot with the Academy in the last few months before I finished at Northampton and I said I still wanted to be helpful to the guys in Essex because there's quite a few guys in the Academy who are from Suffolk and Essex," said Haywood, who will also now occupy a role as a coach at his boyhood club, Colchester RFC.

"I know how difficult it can be to access the coaching without having to travel and I know how much of a difference it made to me going to board at Moulton as a teenager to be able to access the Northampton coaches to further my career.

"It's a massive catchment area and the school I'm going to, St Jo's, have had people like Ehren (Painter), Luds (Lewis Ludlam), Manny Iyogun, Moony (Alex Moon) went there for a bit.

"They've got a good crop of players who are now a part of the Northampton setup so it will be interesting to see if we can get any more up to Northampton and hopefully be a really good feeder school for the club.

"It was a big selling point for them that I've been through the system at Saints, I know what you need to do to get there and hopefully I can help a few of the guys do that."

It was far from an easy decision for Haywood to retire from rugby at the age of just 31.

After all, he seemed to have plenty of good years still ahead of him.

But such is the financial state of professional rugby union in this country currently that he had to reassess his options and ultimately reach the decision to call time on his playing career.

"I would carry on playing, but with the state of the game and the influx of players who have gone onto the market, it's really pushed down the value of players in my position," Haywood explained.

"I was talking to one of the guys back home and he was saying that St Jo's had a potential role coming up and to be honest, the two roles I've got coming up at Colchester and St Jo's was more than what I was getting financially at Northampton.

"Plus, I wasn't guaranteed to play and I didn't want to stay at Northampton if I wasn't going to play much.

"I wanted to be 100 per cent in at a club, I didn't want to be seen as fourth choice.

"They obviously brought in Curtis Langdon, plus there's Sammy (Matavesi) and Robbie (Smith) and I didn't want to just fall off the earth.

"With the way the market is, Saints had a chance to sign Curtis Langdon and he's an up and coming hooker, he's played for England and realistically the club felt they could maybe get two years from me but six from him and he's probably a better player now.

"Financially, it would probably make more sense for the club to sign him than to keep me.

"Finances are a massive thing now."

Haywood's decision was made midway through the season.

He added: "I went in and sat down with Dows (Saints director of rugby Phil Dowson) and I was brutally honest with him.

"I told him I was pursuing other stuff and I don't want to just jump at what you guys are offering me.

"I said to Dows 'what would you do in my scenario?' and he said 'sometimes the stuff off the pitch outweighs the stuff on the pitch'.

"He told me that knowing when (to retire) is the tricky time to find.

"After I made the decision, I said to him 'I don't know if I've made the right decision because I still want to play'.

"He said 'you won't know until you've done it' so it was good to have Dows in that sort of position because he's been through it before.

"I said things honestly and I told him I want to stay involved with Northampton, not just leave and that be it."

That Haywood wants to retain a link to Saints is no surprise.

He has given his all to the club since he started his journey at the Gardens started as an Under-12s player.

"I was quite competitive as a kid and that was the main reason why I got into rugby," said Haywood, who played as a seven at times as a teenager before a stint with Eastern Counties saw him find a home in the No.2 shirt.

"I did tag rugby at school and I went to my local club, Colchester. I loved it, loved getting involved and didn't really want to stop going.

"We had quite a good team and I always wanted to be the best in the team. It was the same with cricket, athletics.

"Rugby seemed to be the thing I was best at so that's why I pursued it.

"I just always made sure I worked the hardest and every single thing I tried to do, I tried to compete and just show the coaches I'm willing to work hard.

"I wanted to show them I would work as hard as possible to get there."

Haywood would continue that work ethic as he rose through the ranks at Saints.

He was often viewed as Dylan Hartley's understudy by those who didn't see his work day to day at the Gardens, but he was so much more than just a back-up.

Haywood was a vital cog in the Northampton wheel, ensuring levels didn't drop when Hartley was unavailable and, at times, pushing the England man in a battle for the starting shirt.

But did Hartley's dominance for Saints and England leave Haywood feeling underappreciated at times and does he feel it hampered his chances of wearing the Red Rose as he could have been perceived as a back-up at his club?

"Yeah, maybe, but I just saw it as if the club saw Dyls as number one, if I played well and overtook him, there would be a good chance I would play for England," Haywood said, in typically upbeat fashion.

"Obviously he was England's starting hooker so if I took his jersey at Northampton, there was a good chance I would get to play for England. That was my thinking.

"The thing is, me and Dyls were totally different players. I was more move the ball, don't carry as much, get hands on the ball, put people in space. Dyls was more a set-piece guy, made his tackles, 100 per cent reliable.

"I wouldn't compare us because we were totally different players.

"Dyls is a great bloke and someone I could look up to in the way he played and how he approached stuff off the pitch.

"When we talk about him being a good leader, he wasn't just a good leader on the field, he was a good leader off it.

"I would say now looking at my career as a whole, that time when he was in the role of captain, was probably the best time at Northampton I've been a part of."

Haywood's form for Saints could easily have resulted in him converting his appearances for England Under-20s into senior caps, but it didn't.

"Looking back at it now, actually I’m not frustrated because I gave it the best shot I could and it wasn't up to me whether I got selected or not," he said.

"I didn't pick the team and I've got no grudges or anything that I didn't play for England.

"I just tried to represent Northampton to the best of my ability.

"It was a big goal of mine when I was younger to play for England and obviously after we won the Prem and the cup, I would have loved to have been able to put on that England jersey just once at least."

Perhaps Haywood's best individual season at Saints came in 2015/16.

Though the black, green and gold had started to slip after topping the Premiership regular-season table for the very first time in 2015, Haywood just got better and better.

So much so that he was named in the league's dream team in the summer of 2016.

"I found the picture the other day when I was sorting out my kit," Haywood said.

"I played something like 30 games that year so in the space of five seasons, I was probably involved in 120 games, something silly, then I started to get injured.

"It was when Boydy (Chris Boyd) had come in (in 2018) and it was a new era for Northampton.

"It was quite hard to come back from my knee injury that I suffered at Gloucester (in November 2018).

"Boydy came in with a style of rugby that I liked to play and when I did my knee, it hit me for six.

"It was quite frustrating because I'd waited that long to be first choice but I knew I had been ahead of Dyls at times so it wasn't the fact I cared whether other people saw me as number one or not.

"It was just a real frustrating time because Boydy came in, it was a style I liked and we had young lads we wanted to build the foundation on.

"We go to Gloucester away and then I do all the ligaments in my knee and it was a really hard process to get back running and stuff.

"I was out for about 11 months and my knee didn't feel quite right but you listen to the physios and you get back in, but then Covid hit and my knee went bad again.

"I actually needed an operation on it because I couldn't bend it.

"We went with the two-team approach in Covid, which was hard because I wasn't playing great and my knee was feeling terrible. It was a tricky time."

Saints have not managed to pick up a Premiership trophy since that magical season back in 2013/14.

That had been the culmination of a building process for the club, in which Haywood more than played his part, having made his debut from the bench against Gloucester in September 2011.

"That (double-winning) season was unbelievable really because looking back at it, it was my fourth or fifth year of being at Northampton," Haywood said.

"We had the year when we lost to Quins in the (2012) semi-final and that was my first season. I dislocated my shoulder at Scarlets away and I'd benched 15 games and started three, which fuelled the fire to want to play more.

"I went to the Quins semi-final and obviously we lost and they went on to win the title.

"The year after, we lost to Leicester in the final, Dyls got red carded and I got 40 minutes but we ended up losing.

"It was great to go that step further the year after and actually win it.

"We'd made quite a few signings. We brought in George North, Kahn (Fotuali'i) and we had some unbelievable players who made a massive difference."

But Haywood's time at Saints could have actually come to an end in the summer of 2014.

It could have been a case of finishing on a high had the club not come through with an offer he had longed for.

"The year we won the Prem, I had got an offer from (Leicester) Tigers to go there and I actually met up with them, only because of the money situation," Haywood explained.

"I was sat behind Dyls and he was taking all the pie so at the end of the day, sometimes you need to go out and look at other clubs for your own club to bump up your salary.

"So I met up with Tigers and they offered me a deal.

"I also had Irish and Wasps interested in me, but I was never going to leave Northampton - I was always going to stay.

"But at the end of the day, it's business and you're trying to get the most money for yourself because your career isn't long.

"That was the main reason why I had a look around, but after that I signed a three-year deal at Northampton and it wasn't like I wanted to go anywhere else.

"The thing was, I would have gone into the same sort of scenario at Tigers because Tom Youngs was there and he was playing really well. It was between him and Dyls for the England shirt so I would have just left Northampton to go to a local rival to be in the same sort of position.

"Looking back at it now, it would have been crazy (to have played for Tigers)."

After Saints won the title and Haywood signed his new deal, the club's tilt at another title ended in a home semi-final against Saracens in 2015.

After that, they failed to finish in the top four again until 2019.

"We sort of fizzled out," Haywood said.

"We'd done all the hard work to get to where we were and things didn't go right for us.

"We sort of papered over the cracks and in the Prem final we could back ourselves to win a game in the last minute and if we had a shot, we knew we would score.

"What I mean by papering over cracks is that we might have been struggling in defence and we didn't work on it as much as we should have.

"We perhaps weren't as honest and accountable as we should have been.

"In the couple of years before winning the Prem, we found players like Samu (Manoa), which is something unbelievable to do, to find someone who was such a presence.

"We brought in Corbs (Alex Corbisiero), Kahn (Fotuali'i) and Salesi (Ma'afu) and I'm not sure we had such impactful players come in after that."

Saints have now made it to back-to-back Premiership play-off semi-finals, losing at eventual champions Leicester last year and eventual champions Saracens this year.

But there will be no more title bids for Haywood as he heads off to pastures new.

His final game at the Gardens was an emotional one at the end of April as he said goodbye in the friendly against Leicester.

He was close to tears in his post-match interview in front of friends, family and team-mates.

And he said: "It sort of hit me driving to the club and in the warm-up, knowing it was going to be my last game.

"I tried not to think about it leading up to it and then it was really emotional for me because it's the club I grew up wanting to play for, got the chance to play, had a good career, won some stuff and then I knew it was going to be the last time I was going to play for them.

"It was really emotional but it was nice to have my family there because they've supported me throughout my career."

But perhaps the reality of not playing for Saints again will only truly dawn on Haywood when his new job begins and the black, green and gold start the 2023/24 season without him.

"I don't think it's sunk in yet because normally we'd have a summer holiday so we'd be off for five weeks anyway," Haywood said.

"Normally around now, I'd start to do the transition programme.

"I actually started to do some running last week just to keep myself fit but I don't think it's quite sunk in that I won't be going back yet.

"I've actually thought I want to be even healthier now and I feel I'm too heavy so I want to lose a bit of weight and get into shape.

"I'm going to do some more running just to feel better in myself now I'm not playing."

Haywood's stay in Northampton is now over as he, his wife Hannah and their two children, Max and Mason, are moving to Weeley in Essex.

It was time for the Haywoods to get back to where they feel they truly belong.

"I've been away from home for 15 years so I thought it was about time for us to go back and spend time with family," Haywood explained.

"We only were seeing our family once a month so we thought we'd make the big jump and go back home.

"Hannah's parents live in Weeley and they have a farm. I wanted the kids to grow up on a farm plus my family are over that way and we've been away for so long.

"But I still want to stay in touch with Saints and I'm still early in my coaching journey so maybe one day you'll see me back at Northampton as a coach. We'll see."