Saints won despite 'every error in the playbook'

Northampton centre Rory Hutchinson hopes they have "blown away the cobwebs" after returning to Prem action with a less than convincing win over Newcastle.

Saints came out on top by a slender 28-27 margin, their fourth victory of the season over Red Bulls in league and cup.

And it meant they remain two points ahead of defending champions Bath at the top of the table, with seven rounds to go in the race for the play-offs.

"If we could make every error there is in the playbook, I think we did it," Scotland international Hutchinson told BBC Radio Northampton.

"That's a hard thing about sport, you can't really put your finger on why, mentally, you're not in the right space.

"Our breakdown wasn't good enough and too many handling errors let them back into the game. That's what made it really close."

Northampton - who scored four tries - were without most of their international stars, Alex Mitchell and Alex Coles both injured, and others rested after Six Nations duty.

But Hutchinson did not offer that as an excuse and said: "We've got to be able to understand situations quicker. Their one game plan was to mess up our breakdown in a PC way and we didn't react quick enough.

"We'll use this as getting the cobwebs out and look forward to next week (away to Saracens). We hold ourselves to higher standards than that but we won, that's the most important thing, keeping that (100%) streak (at home) alive."

Director of rugby Phil Dowson thanked supporters at Franklin's Gardens for helping carry the team through with their noisy backing.

"We don't talk about results, we don't talk about winning and losing, we talk about performance and there's loads of elements, attack, defence, set-piece, kick game, that we can be better at," he said.

"But for those guys who were put under pressure against a (Newcastle) group that came out swinging to see what this run-in is going to be like, it was an incredibly valuable experience."