Saints have since learned they will face Exeter Chiefs on Saturday 20 June at Allianz Stadium, following their triumph over Bath in Saturday\u2019s second play\u2011off encounter \u2014 another side with a heavyweight pack akin to the one that travelled to Northamptonshire on Friday evening.<\/p>\n
The England and British & Irish Lions star admitted that some nerves had crept into the camp ahead of facing Saints\u2019 oldest rivals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether we like to admit it or not, we were particularly nervous this week because Leicester, with the style they play, are a tough match\u2011up for us,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019ve got a real power game and, when we\u2019re on it, we can live with that \u2014 but we knew we had to be right at our best to go with them.<\/p>\n
\u201cCredit to their pack, their front five \u2014 they\u2019ve got some quality operators in there \u2014 and our pack did a good job sticking with them.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir England boys are outstanding, and knowing those lads as well, I know how much they live for that derby. It\u2019s a massive thing for them.<\/p>\n
\u201cParticularly Billy Searle and Freddie Steward coming off touch\u2011and\u2011go injuries \u2014 both probably weren\u2019t expecting to play in this game, but both were exceptional. To come back in having not played much rugby and put in a performance like that is credit to them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saints have since learned they will face Exeter Chiefs on Saturday 20 June at Allianz Stadium, following their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-640972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640972","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=640972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}