■By JON NEWCOMBE

PREVIEW... Northampton Saints v Munster Today. Kick-off 12.30pm, Franklin’s Gardens IT is games like this after noon’s Champions Cup Round of 16 clash against Munster that Tom James hankered for while he was playing in the Championship at Bedford and Doncaster. Having proved himself in the second tier and signed for Northampton at the height of the Covid restrictions in the summer of 2020, the opportunity to play in front of a raucous Franklin’s Gardens crowd had been initially denied to the scrum-half. But that won’t be the cas...