As the Northampton team bus pulled away from Twickenham on Saturday night, celebrations in full swing, ski goggles adorning heads of the already well-oiled Premiership champions, one of their former players could be spotted making his way across the car park. Rob Horne, the former Australia international, had flown thousands of miles to watch his old side end their 10-year wait for a Premiership title in desperately tense fashion.
It was a poignant moment to see Horne at Twickenham because it was there that Northampton played a match in his honour against Leicester in October 2018. It was six months after he had sustained a career-ending injury, against the same opponents, at the age of 28. Horne was captaining Northampton for the first time that April afternoon but an early collision resulted in severed nerves and the permanent paralysis of his right arm.
