Win at Tigers is a starting block for Saints, says Furbank

The black, green and gold showed real resilience to claim a crucial Gallagher Premiership victory at the home of their local rivals.

It pushed them up to fourth in the standings with seven league games still to play.

And Furbank, who started at fly-half and skippered the side against Tigers, said: “It's amazing.

“Any away victory is special, and we need a few more of those if we're going to be pushing for top four.

“Our home record is reasonably decent so we need to be better on the road.

“It's a starting block because you've got to come away and fight for everything. We did that.

“We were playing in front of 24,000 Leicester fans, but there were a few Saints fans there and it was nice to hear them when the final whistle went and throughout the game.”

It was only Saints' second away win of the season in the Premiership, though the other one was deleted from the standings after the team they beat, Wasps, went into administration.

Phil Dowson's side have struggled to stop sides outscoring them on the road, but that wasn't the case as they stood tall against Tigers.

“It's very special and the way we went about it made it even more special,” Furbank said.

“It was a fight and we'd spoken about it being that coming here.

“We stuck in that fight for 80 minutes and that's ultimately what brought us the win.

“It was a lot of kick chase, a lot of back and forward and they are big, physical men.

“We did really well to halt their momentum quite a lot and we didn't have much off the back of that so we had to go back to the boot as well.

“I thought our back three did outstanding under the high ball. Rambo (James Ramm), Skos (Courtnall Skosan) got peppered all day and then TJ (Tom James) put his kicks on the money the majority of the time and it allowed us to stay in that game.

“When you come away with wins in that kick battle, it gives you that extra bit of momentum.”

Furbank added: "We've been pretty poor away from home for a lot of this season.

"Dows said that we need to be in games at half-time away from home because there have been too many games where we've gone away and are 20 points down at half-time. You're always chasing it from there.

"We spoke about being in the game come half-time and I thought we managed that reasonably well.

"From there, we just pushed on, we won a few of those kick battles, got in the right areas and took our chances when they came."

Saints were missing five players to England duty, while the likes of Courtney Lawes and Sam Matavesi were sidelined due to injury and Fraser Dingwall and Lukhan Salakaia-Loto were suspended.

But the squad showed its strength as the black, green and gold took down a Tigers team containing star names such as Jasper Wiese and Anthony Watson.

"It was a first derby for some of the boys and we spoke about coming together," Furbank said.

"We knew we were missing some big characters and leaders but we spoke about coming together with everyone doing their own job, sticking to our system.

"Boys did an outstanding job. You go through the whole 15 and everyone did their job and put in a hell of a shift."