Top-two spot takes priority over being PREM top dogs, says Saints boss Dowson

Saints currently occupy the spot at the summit, sitting one point ahead of Bath, who they host in a sold-out league fixture on Saturday (kick-off 5.30pm).

With five regular-season games to go, a win this weekend would keep the black, green and gold in pole position to finish top of the table.

But the most important thing for Dowson and Co is to ensure they do not drop outside the top two as they are desperate to have a home game in the end-of-season shootout.

When asked about the significance of potentially finishing top, Dowson said: "We value it from a competitive point of view.

"I'd much rather be in first place than second place but fundamentally when you strip it back to what we wanted to achieve at the start of the year, to finish in the top two to qualify for a home semi-final, that's statistically one of the best ways to get to a final, to finish in the top two.

"There's a ludicrous stat in terms of the amount of times teams have won away in the play-offs so to be in the top two is the important thing.

"Of course, we want to be top dog, and I'm sure they (Bath) would say the same, not because we want to play anyone different in the semi-final, that will work itself out, but we want to be in the top two and as a competitive person, you want to be in No.1."

Saints have recent history against Bath, having suffered a heartbreaking 43-41 Investec Champions Cup quarter-final defeat at The Rec earlier this month.

"We were very harsh on ourselves after that Bath game,” Dowson said.

"There was lots that was good about our game in that match and the challenge now is to be as harsh on ourselves after a good result at Exeter in terms of some of the things we need to be better at.

"There's always stuff we can be better at. We conceded 28 points last weekend so there's always things we can work on.

“There were opportunities we didn't convert so it's never going to be a game of perfect.

“I thought the resilience we showed, going down 14-0, the lessons we learned from the week before, our emotional bounce back from the week before, our connectedness, our relentlessness to keep playing right to the death - all of those things were very, very positive.”

When asked what went wrong for Saints at Bath earlier this month, Dowson said: “You just can't afford to concede 43 points, and defensively we didn't manage to keep them out for long enough.

“And from an attack point of view, we didn't convert some of the opportunities.

“We didn't manage to wrestle the momentum back in the second half.

“There's loads of technical things we would have done differently in that game, but the mindset to continue to play, to continue to look for opportunities is something that struck home for the playing group.”

So how much analysis have Saints had to do this week, considering they only played Bath a couple of weeks ago?

"It's probably reduced a bit because not a huge amount has changed,” Dowson said.

“We watched the Quins game together as a coaching group and went through that.

“We're aware of the strengths this Bath team have, the quality they have and we'll make sure we prepare accordingly.”