NORTHAMPTON Saints are confident that the Gallagher Premiership clash with Worcester Warriors will go ahead on Saturday after a Covid-19 outbreak at the club last week threatened to disrupt the fixture at Sixways.

Saints returned to training on Wednesday morning in preparation for their trip to Worcester after the club were forced to forfeit their Champions Cup game with Racing 92 last weekend due to a number of positive cases within the squad.

Training was also halted between last weekend and Wednesday this week before a fresh round of testing was done on Tuesday.

Northampton attack coach Sam Vesty explained that the situation was looking a lot healthier and that the signs were good for the fixture this weekend.

"We've had to miss a couple of training days but it hasn't had a huge effect on us and we're back in today," Vesty said.

"We'll be able to train for a couple of days before the game on Saturday.

"Most people who got it were pretty symptom-free and wouldn't have known they had got it had they not had the PCR test.

"We've just had to rearrange our training a little bit because we were planning to come back from Paris on the Monday so we would have trained Tuesday and had Wednesday off. We've just flipped that Tuesday and Wednesday around.

"It hasn't changed things massively. We've got a few people who are missing but due back tomorrow and it's all expected to be fine."

Regardless of the players available for the Saints, they travel to Worcestershire with Gallagher Premiership play-off hopes still very much alive.

They sit fifth in the league table just three points behind Gloucester who currently occupy the final semi-final spot.

As for Worcester, their new era under Steve Diamond begins but the reality remains that they are still a way off where they want to be.

They have suffered two extremely heavy defeats back-to-back by their opponents this weekend in recent times - 14-62 in March 2021 at Sixways and 66-10 at Franklin's Gardens in October - so will be keen for revenge.

They will be missing the likes of Willi Heinz, Ollie Lawrence (both injury) and Duhan van der Merwe who did not train with Scotland this week due to illness.