Matavesi explains how celebrating individual success builds Saints' team spirit

In fact, every Monday time is taken to applaud those who have done well at the weekend.

And Sam Matavesi had his moment in the sun earlier this season after scoring what Saints boss Phil Dowson labelled 'a worldie of a try' for the Navy against the RAF.

"They showed it in the meeting and I was a bit embarrassed," the Fiji hooker said.

"The ball just came to me, I had a bit of space out wide and I thought I'd put it on my toe and it bounced in my favour.

"I was pretty excited and had to play it down after."

Taking note of what players have achieved is all part of adding to the team spirit at Saints.

And Matavesi explained: "It's really good because every Monday is our main meeting and if boys have been on loan at Leicester Lions or Bedford or somewhere else and they've done something well, everyone's behind that.

"It's a group effort.

"Some of the boys who have been playing for Bedford and elsewhere, they still have to turn up here and train and it's one of the massive reasons why we've been so good this year, because of how we've trained, and that's down to the boys who aren't getting into the 23 each week but are still training tough, and it's massive."

There was another huge individual accomplishment last weekend as Ollie Sleightholme added to his ever-increasing try tally with a hat-trick in the 90-0 win against Gloucester.

But Sleightholme could easily have been joined in a try treble by Curtis Langdon, who scored twice.

Langdon was taken off and replaced by Matavesi, who scored with one of his first touches of the ball, latching on to a lineout drive and powering over the line.

The moment wasn't lost on Langdon or anyone on the Saints bench as they shared plenty of laughter that the hooker who had started the game had just missed out on a backseat ride to secure a hat-trick.

"At the time, I didn't think about it," Matavesi said.

"When I came on, I was straight into the lineout so the first thing I was worried about was hitting the lineout and whatever comes off it is going to be a drive because that's what was called.

"It wasn't until after it that someone said apparently Curt was livid, which is quite nice!"

Saints refused to relent last weekend, putting Gloucester to the sword in stunning fashion.

Matavesi scored twice, but he was taking little credit for that.

"People were like 'you got two tries' but I literally put it over the line so I can't take much credit from it," he said.

"To keep going for that long and to keep Gloucester at zero was massive.

"I tried to throw a magic offload to Sleights, knocked it on and there's people looking at me like 'what the f are you doing?'.

"We were probably 70-0 up and that's the difference, being ruthless and wanting to keep going.

"To get to the end and them scoring zero was good because we could easily have let them off and you've seen games where they've come back and scored 20 points but to go to 90-0 was pretty impressive."

Next up for Saints is the final game of the regular season as they take a trip to Bath on Saturday.

And Matavesi said: "We've had some interesting games recently. Leinster away was incredible and we've had a good result against Gloucester and we've got a massive few games coming up.

"There are a few players getting the opportunity to put their hand up for the play-off semi-final and, as a collective, to finish top would be a massive step because in the past two years we've finished fourth.

"Bath have been incredible this season with Finn Russell pulling the strings but the team we've put out is a heck of a team so it's going to be a great contest."