There was one thing worse than enduring the rollercoaster of the day last April when Northampton Saints were relegated despite a comprehensive victory in one of their best performances of the season. And that was having to miss the most important match in a glorious season in National League 1.

Saturday’s game was a fitting, if early, climax to the past seven months with the superb Exeter Chiefs being the only team to stand in the way of the Saints’ move back up to the top flight. Despite there being four league games left to play, a win against second-placed Exeter would mean that Saints were guaranteed promotion.

I bought my tickets for the promised showdown long ago but a knee injury prevented me making the pilgrimage up the M40. But the Saints were eager to resell my tickets given the huge number of fans queueing up for the sell-out game watched by almost 13,500.

By the joys of Radio Northampton via the internet, I was transported back into pre-TV days as I sat in my green, black and gold shirt and tried to imagine the scenes unfolding before the commentators. I did have an advantage over sports radio listeners of yesteryear by having almost instant statistics layed out on the Saints’ website.

Some of the Saints’ victories this year have been comprehensive, but their average score of 43-11 does not do justice to the likes of Exeter or the Cornish Pirates who made the team heavy with past, present and future international players work hard for their victories. In several matches – notably away against Esher, who were in National League 2 the previous season – it was only the Saints' superior fitness leading to strong fourth-quarter performances that helped them evade banana skins.

Saturday’s game was one of the season’s closer affairs with Exeter levelling the score at 5-5 a quarter of the way into the game. Hooker Dylan Hartley, who is tipped to follow former teammate Steve Thompson into England and Lions shirts, scored his second try to retake the lead and Northampton-born Paul Diggin extended the lead five minutes later.

With Exeter narrowing the score to 15-8 just before half time the second 40 minutes was all held breath and bitten nails as the visitors repelled Saints’ attacks and mounted their own challenges. Poor defence was one of the reasons Northampton spent the past few months visiting unfamiliar grounds and is one of those areas the new coaching team have improved, leading to a current average of less than one try scored against them per match (or the bizarre statistic of 0.77 tries a game). The wind and snow meant it was not a day for kicking and unsurprisingly Bruce Reihana and Carlos Spencer each failed with the boot in the last 10 minutes.

One of the joys of rugby is that, in one score, you can go from losing to winning. Of course, conversely, this also means that you can completely mess things up in a couple of seconds. That might explain why, despite the 100 per cent victory rate so far and lots of other statistical evidence, including those 0.77 per cent of tries, no one watching or listening to the game could believe the game was safe, Exeter being just one converted try away from ruining the party.

Fittingly, it was Reihana, whose emotional speech on that fateful day in April last year cemented his place in fans’ hearts, who kicked an unlikely penalty in the dying mintues to take the result beyond doubt. This year it was all sweet and no bitter, with a match victory and wider reasons for celebration.

Saints have been through an important rebuilding exercise this year. A combination of the loyalty of the likes of Reihana and Spencer, the development of the existing young players, who might also have jumped ship to further their careers and the try-scoring-machine called Chris Ashton, put them in strong place to give a good account of themselves in the Premiership.

That, and the loyal fans who travelled in their thousands to deepest Cornwall and friendly Esher, sometimes overwhelming ticket offices unused to more than a handful of calls a day.

The final four league games will be no formality – each one will be a cup final for the opposition eager to be the ones to ruin that 100 per cent record. And there is an actual cup final – against Exeter at Twickenham in the EDF National Trophy Final on April 12. After Saturday’s close-run match, I wouldn’t put my mortgage on the result.