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Murphy: 'We need to take our medicine'

Geordan Murphy

Embattled Leicester Tigers’ coach Geordan Murphy says his side need to ‘take their medicine’ following this afternoon’s 36-13 loss at Northampton Saints.

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The Saints were struck what looked like a serious blow before kick-off when Dan Biggar, Courtney Lawes and Owen Franks all failed late fitness tests.

But the hosts took it in their stride, reshuffled and put the Tigers to the sword to move top of the Gallagher Premiership table.

All Black Matt Proctor grabbed two tries, but it was the late call-ins Alex Moon in the second row, Ehren Painter at prop and James Grayson at No.10 that really impressed.

There was not much to cheer for the Tigers, who stay second bottom in the standings with only the Saracens and their 35-point deduction below them.

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And head coach Geordan Murphy admitted his side were comfortably second best.

“We just didn’t get our game going at any part of the day,” he said.

“I thought at 10-10 we had some opportunities in Saints territory and they defended stoically.

“We didn’t attack as we’d have liked and we wasted some opportunities to build up some pressure.

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“Fair play to Saints, when they were given chances they scored and everything stuck for them.

“I felt we could claw it back, but it was a huge moment and it really took the wind out of our sails.

“We’ve got to learn the lessons and look at ourselves. Saints performed at a higher level and were the better team.

“We started to chase and they just kept turning us. Our form needs to be better. A lot of things need to function for us and we need to take our medicine.”

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Northampton director of rugby Chris Boyd was hugely impressed by the Saints’ late reinforcements.

“We won and got five points, and we played better in more patches than we did badly,” said Boyd.

“We lost 260 international caps to injury but Alex Moon came of age in the second row – he was outstanding.

“Ehren Painter continued to make great progress and put in a good effort in the scrum.

“Jimmy Grayson got a call this morning to say Biggs had woken up with a bad foot and he might have to jump in the game and for him to come in that late and run the ship was a fantastic effort.

“Great credit to our young guys. They had 10 or 11 internationals in their team and it was a real good challenge for us as a Northampton Saints squad. The question was about whether we could step up and do the job, and the guys did that.”

– Press Association

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J
JW 37 minutes ago
Half-back depth is the flaw in 'Razor's' 4-4-4 Rugby World Cup plan

Well there’s a couple of distinctions here that are important aren’t there?


First though like I replied to Tk where does it say theres need to test vets, or proven reliable players? It is simply ‘test quality’.


Now, I have created a list that I think is test quality, so all weve got to do is upskill the missing pieces right? No. Razor might not mean to have given every player half a dozen matchs but he will want to have identified and assured himself that each individual is indeed test quality. So yes, plays like Darry and Lord may still be included in a few squads and used so he’s happy to include them as say 5th and 6th ranked locks, but that doesn’t mean he needs to go to the same level to ensure for himself the 7th and 8th ranked locks.


He might be happy basing performances off SR Finals, or organizing an AB XV match against a team like France or SA with similar locking depth (even organizing say Warner Dearns to be part of the Japan XV etc), and I’m sure they’re going to have a very large squad over in South Africa for two months.


I don’t think he is quite in the same predicament as SA to have to rest top stars. And this is obviously just goal setting, they’re supposed to be hard. As you can see by the context around this series, arbitrary targets like everyone getting some minutes are made. That could also simply be how he ensures he has met the 4. So hookers would be ticked, as he’s already used 5 at test level. If you looked at the Baabaas SA game you’d see Beehre performing like an accomplished test player, that already makes 7 locks with more than 2 full seasons to go. You take the point BA was making about Marshalls previous remarks about Razor want players to be able to play 3/4/5 different positions, that would mean if Razor was really happy with Finau at lock last week he already has 8 test quality locks as well, etc, etc.


TLDR sorry for the big reply, it’s just a goal, the teams not going to suddenly fail if he doesn’t reach it, I think theres many means and many players for him to be comfortable in getting 4 in each position. He’s obviously not going to be able to get 4 proven, hardened test players in each by then, no.

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