Win at Tigers must be starting point - Furbank

Northampton fly-half George Furbank believes victory at Leicester must be a starting point for improved away form as they look to seal a top-four spot.

Saturday’s 19-18 win was their first away from Franklin’s Gardens in the league this season.

It put them fourth in the table – but only three points clear of Leicester in eighth – with seven regular-season games remaining.

“We need to be better on the road,” Furbank told BBC Radio Northampton.

“We need to fight and scrap for everything and to do that in front of 24,000 Leicester fans – there were a few Saints faithful there and it was nice to hear them at the end – was great.”

Furbank contributed 14 points with the boot in a game in which James Ramm produced a moment of sublime sleight of hand to feed Ollie Sleightholme for Northampton’s only try, having been sin-binned in the first half for a high tackle.

“The way we went about it makes it even more special,” said Furbank.

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

“They went to the boot quite a lot and we didn’t have much off the back of that so we had to to go the boot as well – I thought our back three were outstanding under the high ball.”

He added: “We knew we were missing a few big characters and a few leaders, but everyone stuck to their process and put in a hell of a shift.

“We’ve been pretty poor away from home this season. There have been too many times when we’ve gone away and been 20 points down at half-time, and you’re always chasing it from there.

“We spoke about being in the game at half-time and I thought we managed that reasonably well. We were in it at half-time and from there we pushed on and won a few of those kick battles which put us in the right areas.”