{"id":635788,"date":"2026-06-13T00:47:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T00:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/635788\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T00:47:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T00:47:13","slug":"prem-semi-final-northampton-saints-45-31-leicester-tigers-furbank-double-helps-hosts-reach-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/635788\/","title":{"rendered":"Prem semi-final: Northampton Saints 45-31 Leicester Tigers &#8211; Furbank double helps hosts reach final"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Northampton Saints head coach Sam Vesty told BBC Radio Northampton:<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;This place was absolutely buzzing and that always helps. Our lads were absolutely right up for it and I think we wholly deserved that, to be honest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Our attack was fast, and because our ball was fast \u2013 Archie [McParland] had it off the floor so quickly \u2013 that the defence could never get set. I thought our breakdown and the fact our ball was so fast was probably the difference in the end.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We were good and we gave them a few ins that were a bit cheap, which we need to solve because you can&#8217;t give Leicester, you can&#8217;t give good teams opportunities in your 22 because it is very hard to defend there.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s really important to enjoy this win and the fact that we have another week together to enjoy each other&#8217;s company, get better at rugby and then go have an amazing experience.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;If we put our best foot forward, we give ourselves the best chance of hopefully getting across the line. We just have to go there and enjoy it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Leicester Tigers head coach Geoff Parling told BBC Radio Leicester:<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;m devastated, it&#8217;s been an unbelievably good group that has worked hard for each other.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;To just fall now hurts, but also [I&#8217;m] incredibly proud of how the group has gone about its business over the year when everyone at the start of the season wrote us off.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I reckon it was the hardest speech I&#8217;ve ever had to give in a changing room afterwards.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We&#8217;ve had to battle over the last two weeks, we&#8217;ve had two short turnarounds into the game, and they won the league and had the luxury \u2013 and rightly so \u2013 to rest a lot of their players last week. And I thought they just looked like they had a little more zip than us.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Northampton Saints: Furbank; Freeman, Litchfield, Hutchinson, Hendy; Smith, McParland; Iyogun, Langdon, Millar Mills; Coles, Prowse, Kemeny, Pearson, Pollock.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Replacements: Wright, Fischetti, Green, Van der Mescht, Lockett, Chick, Weimann, Dingwall.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sin-bin: Wright (78)<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Leicester Tigers: Steward; Radwan, Wand, Bailey, Hassell-Collins; Searle, Van Poortvliet; Smith, Blamire, Heyes; Martin, Chessum, Liebenberg, Reffell, Moro.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Replacements: Clare, Van der Flier, Hurd, Henderson, Cracknell, Whiteley, Kata, Perese.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Referee: Luke Pearce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Northampton Saints head coach Sam Vesty told BBC Radio Northampton: &#8220;This place was absolutely buzzing and that always&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-635788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}