[8] His original concept was to promote "order" to his younger parish members by creating an "improvement class" for troubled local boys.

[9] The first "official" game played is considered to be against a local team, called the Star, from Bailiff Street, just off the Northampton Racecourse.

[13] Twenty years after its establishment, the first Saints player, local farmer Harry Weston, was awarded an England cap.

Edgar was killed in battle, leading his battalion over the top by kicking a rugby ball[clarification needed] into no man's land on 29 July 1917 attacking a machine gun post and his body was never found.

They were one of the driving forces in the English game for the next 60 years producing players such as Butterfield, Jeeps, Longland, White and Jacobs but hard times were ahead.

Barrie Corless, as director of rugby, set about restructuring the club and soon the Saints were back on the way up, helped by the signing of All Blacks legend Buck Shelford.

In 1999, Saints came runners-up in the Allied Dunbar Premiership, their league campaign climaxing with a crucial home local derby with eventual winners Leicester Tigers, which they lost 15–22.

[25] Ian McGeechan had left the club at the end of the previous season to return to coach Scotland, and was replaced by former Saints player John Steele who had done well on a limited budget at London Scottish.

Steele relied on the foundations laid by McGeechan, as well as the inspirational captaincy of Samoan Pat Lam to lead the club to European success the following season.

[26] In recent times the club narrowly survived relegation from the Premiership, after the coach (Alan Solomons) was sacked in the middle of the 2004–05 season.

After winning their first five matches of 2012–13, the Saints were pulled back into the pack in the Premiership and exited both the Anglo-Welsh and Heineken Cups, despite ending Ulster's four-year unbeaten home European record just before Christmas 2012.

[citation needed] The team finished fourth in the league, and after beating Saracens in the semi-final reached their first ever Premiership final, where they lost 37–17 to Leicester.

Despite finishing second in the table, they went on to win the 2013–14 English Premiership, defeating table-topping Saracens 24–20, after 100 minutes of rugby due to the game going to extra time.

[30][31] They also reached the final of the 2013–14 European Challenge Cup, which they won by beating Bath 16–30, with the match being played at Cardiff Arms Park in Wales.

[35] The team finished 9th overall that year with a points tally of 43, but ultimately avoided relegation and confirmed their place in the 2018–19 Premiership Rugby season.

A new era was confirmed at the club, when it was announced on 29 January 2018, that Hurricanes boss Chris Boyd would link up with the Saints for the 2018–19 Premiership Rugby campaign.

In Boyd's first season at the club, the Northampton Saints would go on to lift the Premiership Rugby Cup, by defeating Saracens 23–9 in front of a home-final crowd, which took place on 17 March 2019.

[37] The Saints also secured a top 4 finish for the first time since 2015, and Boyd's men would go on to face the Exeter Chiefs in the Premiership Rugby semi-final play-off system.

In September 2021, Northampton Saints announced a six-year sponsorship deal with online car dealership cinch, which including naming rights to Franklin's Gardens.

[40] Also located on the ground floor, the Captain's Bar and Heroes Restaurant function as a conference area and serves certain supporters on match days, they both have a capacity of 150.

[43][44] The Cinch Stand is located to the south of the ground and has the tallest seated area in the stadium, it runs along the width of the pitch.

After the previous controversy, the club secured funding through alternate means – a loan thought to be in the region of £5million through Northampton Borough Council – and with planning permission rubber-stamped, building commenced in the summer of 2015.

This cross was removed from the shirts at some point between then and 1904 and the final, gold stripe was added that year after Saints played the Original All Blacks.

Perhaps the most famous of these pushes was carried out by Wayne Smith, who not only ordered the purchase of the famous "punishment car" used in the 2003 season, a Reliant Rialto painted in the club's colours,[60] but also introduced the idea of having a "player of the week" shirt (an away shirt with a large Superman logo stitched onto the chest) as a reward for players for getting man of the match.

The club sells plenty of merchandise with the stickman's likeness on, though the most popular and enduring of these products is a car decal and many vehicles can be seen driving around town with this symbol on the back as a subtle show of support to the team.

In 2015 it was announced that GB Railfreight 66754, a Class 66 mainline freight locomotive would be named "Northampton Saints" in honour of the previous year's Premiership title.

The Supporters Club was officially founded in 1922 and has the primary objective of acting as an organisation to represent Saints fans and make their voices heard.

The Parish is a community initiative set up by the club to support the local area by providing a number of benefits and exclusive offers to people who live within a certain distance of the ground.

[65] Saints announced that for the 2020–2021 Championship and Premiership seasons, they would make a number of players available for usage by Bedford Blues as part of a wider strategic partnership.

Both clubs already had a close relationship due to several factors such as proximity, shared history, frequent friendly games already being played and similarities in business models.