Furbank: Plenty of ‘fixes’ to take into Derby week

First-time captain George Furbank believes Saturday’s 38-22 victory for Northampton Saints over London Irish was a great learning curve for some of the younger players still developing leadership skills at the club. 

Furbank took up the armband after Dan Biggar was ruled out of the game through illness, adding to the absences of club captain Lewis Ludlam, England skipper Courtney Lawes and Saints’ vice-captain Fraser Dingwall. 

The 25-year-old fullback stepped up when it really mattered in the game’s closing stages, snuffing out any possibility of an Exiles comeback when he moved to fly-half to compensate for the sin-binning of Northampton No. 10 James Grayson. 

Furbank said: “Half of the time it didn’t feel like I was captain because I was so far away from the referee.

“We’re a reasonably young group but we’ve got a lot of leaders coming through and a lot of those boys are taking up responsibilities when the likes of Courts, Luds, Biggs and Dingers aren’t playing. 

“We have boys who are very happy to step up to that role and they made my life very easy. 

“You don’t want too many voices, but people – like Matty Proctor especially – lead from the front by their actions. Those boys just allow you to keep calm heads and make the decisions you need to make.”

Furbank accepts it took Saints a while to get going at cinch Stadium at Franklin’s Gardens, initially during a first half that took just over an hour to complete – partly due to two serious injuries to visiting players. 

Irish having three players sin-binned across the 38th and 39th minutes only added to the delays and the home side struggled to find their rhythm again 12 men once the second half got underway. 

Ironically, it was once their opponents were back up to full strength that Saints began to play their best rugby as they quickly built on the 10-3 lead they had established to that point. 

Furbank said: “[Irish] had two serious injuries in that first half, which was unfortunate for those guys and that first half was then around 60 minutes long. 

“It kind of felt like we couldn’t get our tempo into the game and the sort of way that we like to play. 

“It was frustrating and then we couldn’t take our opportunities when they were down to 12 men with three yellow cards, we started the second half pretty poorly too but eventually we fixed those wrongs and started to put our game out there a bit more.

“There were definitely some really frustrating moments in that game, but we also played some smart rugby down in their half and eventually capitalised.

“We’re putting the right things on the field, we think we’re doing some bits well and we’re getting ourselves into good positions. But then there’s a missed final pass or some little bits of miscommunication causing us a few mess ups that we need to fix. 

“That's something we’ll look to put right in training and obviously we’ve got a big week next week, with the Derby, so we need to get those right.”

Saints fortunes against Irish seemed the brightest when they themselves were a man light after conceding a penalty try that reduced the gap to 25-15, with the ten-minute period seeing them add 13 points to their tally, all of them through Furbank. 

The fullback first settled nerves with a penalty, having taken up Grayson’s kicking responsibilities, before running in under the posts for Northampton’s bonus-point try and kicking another penalty from the tee for good measure. 

“We were calm, we knew we were very much still in control at that point,” Furbank said. 

“We knew what we had to do in that situation and we executed that very well. If you look at how Irish went last week, they started really well and they’ve got an electric backline. I thought we did pretty well to keep them reasonably quiet for a lot of the game. 

“Personally, I’m feeling good. I didn’t have too much of a preseason but sometimes that’s quite useful. I’m feeling good and I’m raring to go, especially with Leicester Tigers and Derby Day coming.

“It doesn’t get a lot bigger than that. And we’ve got a few wrongs to put right after that semi-final last season. But we’ve taken our learnings from that game, we’ve put that result to bed. 

“We’ll have our own gameplan of how we’re going to do things next week and if we can execute that game plan, we fully back ourselves to front up.”