A TALENT day designed at finding promising youngsters for a Northampton Saints academy side has been hailed a massive success by the Premiership giants.

The club’s academy coaches held special sessions for about 50 teenage rugby players in the Eastern Counties area as they start thinking about next season’s Under-14s side.

And the general consensus, from the Saints’ Elite Player Development Group coach Simon Sinclair, is that there is real promise ahead after he was blown away by the aptitude and talent on show at Framlingham College on Saturday morning.

Sinclair said: “We invited all the local clubs and schools to send individuals – some of which we were already aware of – as we look to form an Under-14s side next season.

“We were really pleased with the quality and standard on display. There was no one that really stood out, instead everyone performed really well and trained hard. It makes the job of picking a squad rather hard but that is a nice thing.”

The four disciplines worked on during the talent day were handling, decision-making, contact skills and tackling techniques.

The Under-13s will have at least two more sessions to try and impress while Sinclair was keen to insist that there was still chances for them to break through into the Saints academy set-up.

He added: “It is great to have all these youngsters on our database. So even if they don’t make it this time, they can go away and work hard on their game and return to our radar in a years time.

“What is great from our point of view is that the quality coming through just shows how much clubs and schools are really pushing rugby at a youth level.”