Northampton Saints adapted 'incredibly well' in Newcastle win, says George Furbank

George Furbank has been with Northampton Saints since joining their academy in 2015

Northampton's ability to adapt to difficult conditions was key to their first Premiership win of the season, says full-back George Furbank.

Saints were unable to utilise their normal flowing style in heavy rain at Newcastle's Kingston Park.

But they came away with a 16-14 away victory with the help of Curtis Langdon's second-half try.

"We knew when we saw the forecast it was probably going to be a bit of a gritty game," said Furbank.

"It's incredibly tough to throw the ball around and play the way we want to play normally, but we adapted incredibly well."

He told BBC Radio Northampton: "They're almost more rewarding, coming away with victories like that.

"We spoke about doing the small things really well and sticking in the fight and I thought we did that for 80 minutes. It was hammering down and it was just so hard to catch and pass and doing the basic stuff you want to do, so it turns into a bit of a kick battle."

Northampton lost to Sale and Bristol in their first two league games of the season, but the win over the Falcons put them seventh in the table and just two points outside the top four going into Saturday's home fixture against early leaders Bath.

Furbank described Langdon's try as a "magical moment" in the game, which was the result of a "a bit of physicality and a pretty naughty offload".

He continued: "There's always a bit of pressure to get that first win and now we've got that under our belt, hopefully we can build on this and keep moving forward."

The 27-year-old believes, however, that for the game against Bath, Northampton must reduce the number of penalties they concede.

"We're probably a little bit disappointed with the first half in terms of our discipline, I think the penalty count was 10-3 which allowed them [Newcastle] to have long periods of dominance but we did pretty well to stay in the game and keep them away from our tryline," he said.

"It was an area we spoke about at half-time and we knew if we cleaned that up we'd be able to assert dominance on them and win the territory battle, which ultimately wins these sorts of games."