The Gloucester side was made up of a number of U16s who were facing up to opposition, the majority of which were a year older.
However, Junior Academy Manager Billy Clark was far from disheartened at the outcome:
"This was our first outing as a team. That was the reason we took the fixture on, to test ourselves against the best and give our players a marker as to the standard they need to achieve if they are to play at the highest levels.
"The Saints team was predominantly made up of U17 players, whereas we gave a significant number of our U16 players an opportunity to play.
We lost the first half 20 - 0 and drew the second half 14 all, so there are some clear positives to take.
"However our lack of cohesion through not playing together before this really showed in the first half, when we had plenty of pressure on their line and ended up conceding a couple of length of the field tries.
"There were some good performances out there from guys such as Tiff Eden, Will Safe and Julian Osbourne and, whilst we would have wanted to have won, ultimately these games are not all about the final result. They are about testing players in pressure situations and seeing how they respond.
"The guys will have learnt a lot from this experience and will go into our next fixture against Saracens fully aware of the standards they need to achieve.
"We are only a year into our Academy programme so obviously we would expect to have some way to go in competing regularly with the big academies like Saints, Tigers and Saracens who have had their age group teams together since the age of 13.
"But the guys now know there is a lot to work on and the levels we need to achieve, so we expect to see a marked improvement against Saracens in March."
To view a gallery of images from the game, click HERE
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