Summer signing Langdon is loving life at Saints

The hooker made his debut for the club in the 55-5 Premiership Rugby Cup pool stage win against Cambridge Rugby at cinch Stadium at Franklin's Gardens last Saturday.

It was a largely impressive performance from the man who joined from Montpellier during the summer.

And Langdon said: "I'm really enjoying it here and it didn't take long to settle in at all.

"I knew a few of the lads before I arrived and it's a really good playing and coaching group.

"It was a bit of a weird year last year because I moved to Worcester from Sale and didn't really expect it to go how it did (as Worcester went into administration and were suspended from the Gallagher Premiership). But it worked out being a good year for me.

"It was obviously tough at the start of the season with everything that happened at Worcester but I ended up going over to Montpellier and experiencing the Top 14.

"I really enjoyed it over there and I feel I can bring some of those experiences back to the Premiership.

"It's definitely a different style of rugby and every breakdown and set piece is a massive contest, which maybe leads to more tough carries off nine because the ball's slower.

"It was cool to experience and the atmosphere at every game was impressive - you were looking at about 30,000 at every game.

"But it's nice to be back in England, I've really enjoyed it.

"The training has been good and I'm just looking forward to the Premiership season starting now."

Langdon has revealed how his move to Northampton came about, and it turns out he actually had discussions with Saints before moving to Montpellier last season.

“I met with Dows (Phil Dowson) and some of the other coaches when Worcester went under and had some positive conversations,” Langdon said.

"Then the opportunity to go to Montpellier came up so I went over there and those conversations kind of continued with Saints because I was pretty keen to come back to the Premiership straight away.

"We got something sorted pretty early doors after I signed with Montpellier.

"The style of rugby Northampton play is good to watch and I had my first taste of that last weekend, which was good fun.

"There’s a young group of English players here that are going well and pushing to put on an England shirt, which is something I want to be part of.

"I always loved playing at the Gardens and even though it wasn’t full last weekend, the game day experience was really good.”

Saints have three more cup clashes before they start the Gallagher Premiership season with a trip to one of Langdon’s former clubs, Sale Sharks.

"I’m looking forward to going to Bristol this weekend because that will be a good challenge, and hopefully we can keep getting better before that first Premiership game,” Langdon said.

"It will be good to go back up to Sale because my little brother is actually there at the moment so there will be a lot of familiar faces I will be looking forward to seeing on October 15.

"It will be a good place to start, Sale are a physical team and we’ve been working a lot on our defence in this pre-season so it will be a good test for us to start off with.

"Sale do pride themselves on their defence but we pride ourselves on our attack and being able to break teams down.

"It will be interesting to see how we can build over the next few weeks leading into that first Prem game.”