Courtney Lawes: Northampton Saints can win 'when chips are down'
- Published
Courtney Lawes was named man of the match against Munster
Northampton Saints lock Courtney Lawes says winning "when the chips are down" against Munster has given them confidence for the rest of the season.
Saints won 26-23 with 14 men in Ireland to finish their Investec Champions Cup group with four wins from four.
They will now host the same opponents in April, when the competition reaches the last-16 knockout stage.
"To win here, we've been waiting quite a while to do that, and to do it with 14 men is pretty special," said Lawes.
"It shows the grit and determination in this group. When the chips are down we know we can come back and that breeds great confidence - and that's what you need going into the back end of the season."
Saints were a player short after Curtis Langdon was sent off at Thomond Park and only had 13 players on the pitch just before half-time, with George Furbank sin-binned for a potential tip tackle.
But from 15-7 down at the interval, they inflicted a rare home defeat on Munster with a late Sam Graham try, converted by the reliable Fin Smith.
"I think we've got a lot of players now that are really maturing as good international standard players and that shows in the amount that are going away to the Six Nations," Lawes told BBC Radio Northampton.
"They're working exceptionally hard on becoming consistent players and it shows - that's why you can win game after game after game because they understand how they get themselves in the right place to go out there and perform."
Northampton also lead the Premiership and have one more game to go, at home to Newcastle Falcons on Saturday, before the league programme is paused while the Six Nations takes centre stage.
"Experiences like this (against Munster) ask questions of you and we came up with the right answers," said director of rugby Phil Dowson.
"We're far from the finished product and have to make sure we're ready for Newcastle. We can have some downtime after that during the Six Nations and make sure we get our house in order for the last third of the season."
On Langdon's dismissal, he added: "I don't think Curtis did it on purpose, sometimes a knee, an elbow, a shoulder will hit somebody in the head. Those things happen.
"The referee's made a decision - the only thing we can do is adapt to that and make sure we're as clear as possible in our messaging around how we're going to deal with it."