Northampton Saints director of rugby Jim Mallinder says it is time for everybody to re-focus on the game rather than the Harlequins blood story.

The Guinness Premiership begins this weekend and the Saints open with a home match against Worcester.

"It's an unfortunate incident," Mallinder told BBC Radio Northampton.

"You want rugby to be in the papers for the right reasons and there's not much we can do about what's happened at other clubs."

"What we can do is make sure we go out there. We play well, we perform well, hopefully we get some good wins and we get the journalists writing about how successful we are as a rugby side.

"To us it's all about playing hard, playing by the rules, doing what you can to win but you have got to do it in any legal means you can.

"We don't want it as a sport; hopefully everybody has learnt lessons and we can move on and it won't be brought up again."

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