FRANKLIN’S GARDENS — The first chorus of “Shoe Army” came when Northampton Saints hit 50 points, which was exactly what you would expect from home fans who are seeing a welcome and deserved victory coming their way.

The gobsmacking detail that makes you think differently, and ask whether rugby is careering down the wrong path, was to realise this outpouring of joy and support came after Saints’ wing Ollie Sleightholme had just scored – checks notes – the eighth of his side’s 11 tries, for a scoreline of 50-41 against fellow Prem title contenders Bath, with another 20 minutes of the 80 still to play.

By the end at Franklin’s Gardens on Saturday, the scoreline was 71-48, and it meant the appreciation of some brilliant attacking play by both teams was fractured by a nagging worry over the cheapening of the try as rugby’s scoring currency.

If it is too easy to score, the spectacle loses interest and just becomes a matter of who dances through the non-tackling the most often.

There have been 125 tries across the first 13 matches of the new Premiership season, with 18 scored in this one alone.

Saints also beat Bristol Bears 94-33 in May, so they have now featured in the first and second highest-scoring games in Prem history.

On Saturday, Bath’s 48 points was the most by a Prem team in defeat.

For us media types, it’s a challenge. Your terms of reference blur and disappear.

Watching live in the Church’s Stand, I never felt the match was a complete joke, but when the final whistle came, the Saints fans around me wore contented smiles, rather than sharing the edge-of-the seat nervousness of a tighter contest.

On TV, Ally Eykyn always brings a journalistic sense to his commentary, and he expressed the equivocation at 64-48 after 67 minutes: “You could get bored of it, except that it’s so damned good.”

Sitting next to him, former England players Austin Healey and Ben Kay painted a positive contrast with constricted attitudes in the past – of a time when Leicester were 32-0 up at West Hartlepool at half-time, and a Tigers player who would later coach England was worried about “keeping it tight” in the second half.

And of 6-3 scorelines in the fog, and all that trad jazz.

The truth is not quite so straightforward.

In the 2001-2 season when Healey and Kay’s excellent Leicester team were winning their fourth straight Premiership title, and added the European Cup, they scored 30 points or more in 15 different matches.

But their highest tally in the league was a 48-7 win at Saracens, so maybe the most notable comment on Saturday was from Bath’s head coach Johann van Graan: “To get to 50 points used to be a big achievement. Now maybe it is not the same margin anymore.”

You do wonder if defence coaches are an endangered species.

From being credited with Australia winning an entire World Cup in 1999 to Shaun Edwards being shown the door by France earlier this year after they lost 50-40 to Scotland and beat England 48-46.

These scorelines, and the recent points gluts shared by South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, are evidence of the prevailing winds buffeting Test rugby too.

Chris Ashton, the ex-England wing, cautioned on Saturday that England under Steve Borthwick may be unable to go with this attacking flow, partly because Test back rows and defences afford less space.

On the other hand, there were 10 England players in the Northampton line-up, with scrum-half Alex Mitchell posting a solo belter of a try, and his fellow backs Fin Smith, Fraser Dingwall, Sleightholme and Tommy Freeman weaving beautiful patterns drawn up in training by Sam Vesty.

Other factors in the general spate of high scoring are the refereeing of the breakdown and the maul and escorts favouring the team with the ball, the players’ skill levels being honed in more professional training set-ups, the much better pitches (do an internet search for Bath vs Leicester in April 1994 and ask yourself how anyone could score a try in that mud), and the concern around head contact making tackling less brutal.

Elsewhere in this Prem round we have seen Leicester and Gloucester piling up tries with difficult-to-defend mauls from penalties kicked to touch.

It’s not quite as prevalent in other leagues but even Zebre and Vannes, the weakest teams in the URC and Top 14 respectively, are averaging 17 and 19 points a match.

Healey believes the Prem’s attack coaches have been given their head in the last 18 months, in a league collectively committed to a need to entertain.

Northampton’s England fly-half Fin Smith says his club train “under pressure and under fatigue”.

If a ball is dropped they chuck another one in, and go again, and again.

Saturday’s handling and support play was fantastic: the second row Alex Coles galloping in wide channels, the tighthead prop Cleopas Kundiona making smooth pull-back passes.

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Van Graan hinted it could be different at the business end of the campaign next spring but, for now, tons of tries make great highlight reels and “moments” for socials, and Northampton already have a few contenders for score of the season.

Phil Dowson, the Saints boss whose team had lost at Bristol the previous week, was very happy, and he noted: “By the way, basketball is selling loads of tickets to sold-out arenas.”

If try-fests are going to be rugby’s new normal, the reactions of the crowds will tell us whether it is making for a better sport.