Lawes gives his take on secret to Saints' recent success

Lawes was named man of the match on the night as his team claimed a superb 26-23 success despite Curtis Langdon being sent off before the break.

It was a ninth win in a row in all competitions for Saints.

And when asked what he feels the secret to the success is, Lawes said: “We've got a lot of players who are really maturing as really good international standard players. That shows in the amount of players who are going away for the Six Nations and I can't wait to see them.

“When you've got those kinds of players in the team, it brings confidence and they're working exceptionally hard on becoming consistent players and it shows.

“That's why you can win game after game after game because boys understand how to get themselves in the best place to perform and you're seeing that now.”

On the performance at Munster, Lawes said: “To win here, we've been waiting a while to do that, but to do it with 14 men is special.

“It shows the team we've got this season and the grit and determination in this group.

“It (coming back from behind) is not perfect and not necessarily what we want to do but we know that when the chips are down, we can come back, and that breeds great confidence, which is what you need going into the back end of the season.

“We were down to 13 at half-time but we had a game plan and we knew we had to last until Furbs (George Furbank) got back on (after his yellow card).

“We knew we had the wind and that meant we could start playing rugby again.

“Towards the end of the game, the conditions changed again but we dug in, we stuck at it and we defended hard. It won us the game.”

Lawes made so many telling contributions in the win once again.

And he said: “I kind of understand when you're going into the last 10 and you're behind a bit, you need to find a way to do something, to win a turnover or to make a play so that's grown over the years as I've played and started to understand the games a lot more.

“All I'm thinking is 'we're down and we need to do something, not stupid, that can give us the opportunity to win the game’.

“I always enjoy being out on the pitch to be honest.

“I've struggled with injury over the years but thankfully I'm on a good streak at the moment and hopefully that can continue.”

Lawes won't be heading off on England duty this week as he retired from international commitments after the World Cup.

“First time for everything but it will be good,” he said.

“We've got one more game (Saints host Newcastle on Saturday) and then we'll have a bit of time off so I can spend some time with the family and enjoy myself.”