Northampton Saints head coach Sam Vesty told BBC Radio Northampton:
“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.
“Our attack was fast, and because our ball was fast – Archie [McParland] had it off the floor so quickly – 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.
“We were good and we gave them a few ins that were a bit cheap, which we need to solve because you can’t give Leicester, you can’t give good teams opportunities in your 22 because it is very hard to defend there.
“It’s really important to enjoy this win and the fact that we have another week together to enjoy each other’s company, get better at rugby and then go have an amazing experience.
“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.”
Leicester Tigers head coach Geoff Parling told BBC Radio Leicester:
“I’m devastated, it’s been an unbelievably good group that has worked hard for each other.
“To just fall now hurts, but also [I’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.
“I reckon it was the hardest speech I’ve ever had to give in a changing room afterwards.
“We’ve had to battle over the last two weeks, we’ve had two short turnarounds into the game, and they won the league and had the luxury – and rightly so – to rest a lot of their players last week. And I thought they just looked like they had a little more zip than us.”
Northampton Saints: Furbank; Freeman, Litchfield, Hutchinson, Hendy; Smith, McParland; Iyogun, Langdon, Millar Mills; Coles, Prowse, Kemeny, Pearson, Pollock.
Replacements: Wright, Fischetti, Green, Van der Mescht, Lockett, Chick, Weimann, Dingwall.
Sin-bin: Wright (78)
Leicester Tigers: Steward; Radwan, Wand, Bailey, Hassell-Collins; Searle, Van Poortvliet; Smith, Blamire, Heyes; Martin, Chessum, Liebenberg, Reffell, Moro.
Replacements: Clare, Van der Flier, Hurd, Henderson, Cracknell, Whiteley, Kata, Perese.
Referee: Luke Pearce.
