Saints keen to 'kick into another gear' for clash with Saracens

The black, green and gold claimed an impressive 49-21 win at Newcastle Red Bulls on Friday night, booking their place in the cup semi-finals in the process.

Munga skippered Saints on the night and he was happy with how they dealt with the Red Bulls at Kingston Park.

But the lock believes he and his team-mates will have to be even better when they return home to face Saracens.

"To see the depth of the squad out here, putting themselves about, was fantastic,” Munga said.

"For us, it's so important because as we move into the back end of the season, it's the squad that does things for you and we want to be successful in all competitions.

“Coming away with a win always makes it better and as we look forward to the game against Saracens at home, it's going to be another big challenge.

“We know what a game against Saracens is, no matter what competition we're playing in, so them coming to the Gardens is going to be another one where we're going to have to start fast and be physical.

“In order for us to get the win, we're going to have to kick into another gear from what we saw here.

“But take nothing away from the lads because this was fantastic, everyone put themselves about, the intensity was really good so I'm really pleased.

“We take every game as it comes but we want to kick on and do as well as we can.

“We have a chance now to play a big game next week and we want to be in more and more knockout games as the season goes on.”

Saints had gone 7-0 down at Newcastle, but they responded superbly as they took full control of the match, eventually going on to claim a third successive bonus-point win Pool B.

"We spoke during the week about trying to come up here and impose ourselves physically," Munga said.

“It's such a tough place to come, they're building a big resurgence up here, there's a lot of emotional energy and we knew coming here would be tough.

“We said we had to start fast but in fairness to the Red Bulls, they started really quickly and we needed a bit more.

“But once we got our feet on the ground and started building, we responded really well and we came away with a good result.

“In this block, we look at it as an opportunity for players to improve and put their hand up for some of the big games to come later in the season.

“This block is about us doing us so it's a good performance but it's what we've been building over the last six to eight weeks.”

Saints went into the game at Newcastle on the back of recovering from going 19-0 down to win at Harlequins a week earlier.

"Quins last week was a challenge for us but we also knew coming up here was going to be another physical and emotional challenge,” Munga said.

“I'm really pleased with how the lads went today because we knew it was going to be tough.

“Yes we conceded at the end, which wasn't how we wanted to go out, but I said to the lads that if we're going to go out, we're going to go out swinging.

“Two yellow cards (for Sam Graham and Archie Benson) showed we did everything we could to stop them scoring.

“Hopefully we can go on to good things in this competition.”

Saints had lost the reverse cup fixture to Newcastle at the Gardens back in November.

And it was clear they were eager to avoid making the same mistake again at Kingston Park.

"Dows (Saints boss Phil Dowson) said in the meeting before the game that it sits wrong with him to lose to a team twice in a season, home and away,” Munga explained.

“We know how important home wins are so having lost to them at home already, we wanted to get one back.

“We want to carry on in this competition, as we do in all competitions, so it was spoken about and they came with a lot of intensity and aggression so it was good we could get the win.”