Saints not making major changes to their defence ahead of the new season

The black, green and gold finished eighth in the Gallagher PREM during the previous campaign, but they did make it to the Investec Champions Cup final.

And they showed that when they could get close to their best team on the park, they could beat the highest level club sides.

The new season starts next month, with Saints set to play pre-season fixtures at Bedford Blues and Glasgow Warriors in the build-up to the big kick-off.

And defence coach Radford said: “We've got some focuses we want to go after defensively, but in terms of major changes it's nothing like that.

“It's always about how well we can move, how well we can connect and how well we can communicate that gives us the best chance of defending well.

“That's a constant, whatever stage you're at in your career.

“Those things always come in handy.”

There is no doubt that international call-ups and a host of injuries had a huge impact on Saints' league form last time round.

“We were victims of our own success last year,” Radford said.

“When we put our best team on the park, which was mainly in Europe, we managed to swing with anybody in that continent, and South Africa as well!

“Winning it (the PREM) the year before, we stacked the international scene and we had about 11 lads in the international scene with England and Scotland, so when they play or have a training camp they're not available for us.

“England had two training camps, one in Spain and one in Italy, and we lost both of the games when they were on - tight fixtures, one against Bristol, one against Quins.

“And then when they come back from the Six Nations or the autumn Tests, you've got to give them a breather as well.

“So you're almost a victim of your own success, but hopefully those lads, like Fin Smith, who finished the Six Nations as the starting 10 for England, are going to be better able to adapt to that this time round, and he's one of many.

“In the last game, apart from inside centre, it was our full backline starting for England, but that is what happens when you produce good, young, English players. It has a knock-on for your league form and your consistency.”

On the damaging raft of injuries Saints suffered, Radford added: “It started early because Robbie Smith blew his knee out, Sammy Graham blew his knee out, Burger Odendaal got injured the back end of the year before so we were down on troops anyway and it continued.

“You need durability, you need to be game ready and hopefully we've got all our bad luck out the way last year.”

So can Saints do anything in training to help them to prevent any of the knocks they sustained last season?

“It's always a tough challenge because if you don't go hard enough, you're not battle ready, but if you go too hard, there's chances of picking more knocks up,” Radford said.

“One of the issues you have is that a lot of them are soft tissue injuries so that's training load, maybe change of surface, maybe down to fatigue and it's always a difficult one because you don't see them coming.

“With a collision, you know that's part of the game and it's going to happen, but we had a lot of collision injuries last year - two knee blow-outs, two shoulder recons and it's part and parcel.”