Saints bid to get preparations right as they seek fast start after break from action

They put a clear focus on adding more substance to their obvious style, and it has certainly worked, with the club currently on a run of 10 successive wins in all competitions.

But now they are tasked with doing it all again in what is being dubbed 'a mini pre-season'.

Saints don't play a Premiership match between the win against Newcastle Falcons on January 27 and the trip to face Bristol Bears on March 22.

They do have two friendlies prior to that game at Ashton Gate, taking on DHL Stormers and Sale Sharks at cinch Stadium at Franklin's Gardens.

And it's all about fine-tuning and improving further ahead of the return to competitive action as Saints bid to turn what has been a superb season so far into a truly memorable one.

"We haven't had the experience of doing it before at this time of the year so it's about trying to work out what the best way forward is," said Dowson, when asked about the Six Nations break his side are currently experiencing.

"We took some time off because of that run of games, which was fairly brutal, and it's important for the lads to get away from rugby and to get some sunshine and a change of scene.

"We've come back in and sat down to discuss what was successful during that period of time, what we can improve on and how we can integrate that into our training.

"We want to give ourselves the best chance to reclaim some of that momentum.

"Fundamentally things don't change with our game.

"We know what's been good and what we need to continue to work on because it doesn't just happen.

"At the same time, there's patterns we can identify that we can be better at, whether that's in attack, defence, forwards, backs, discipline, whatever it is and try to improve moving forward."

So what does Dowson feel Saints have got so right during their current winning streak?

"There's loads of things and we haven't got time to go through all the individual bits and pieces but what we did have was a confidence and trust in our game whether we were up or down," he said.

"We had belief in what we were trying to do and real clarity in terms of what individual roles were within the system.

"We had real cohesion of what we wanted to try to achieve every week.

"It was about people knowing what they were doing, knowing why they were doing it and working as hard as they possibly could Monday to Friday and enjoying it on a Saturday."

While some players may look to use the current training weeks to add more strength, it won't be a squad-wide effort like it was last summer.

Dowson explained: "We probably don't have enough time to do that.

"But each player has an individual plan as to how to get better and some of that will revolve around their physical element.

"Do they want to try to get stronger this month? Do they want to lose some weight? Do they want to put weight on?

"It will be much more individual than what we did last summer."