Saints will be '˜ready to rumble' at Ricoh Arena

Jim Mallinder’s men have this weekend off as they are out of the Champions Cup, which has reached its quarter-final stage.

Wasps will travel to Leinster in a tough last-eight tie.

But Saints are able to recover and freshen up after last weekend’s disappointing 36-31 defeat to Leicester Tigers at Franklin’s Gardens.

“It would have been nice to come straight back in and focus on the next team and get on but I guess it’s nice though,” said Tuitavake, who opened the scoring against Tigers after just 90 seconds.

“We had some international boys that have had it full on so it’ll be good for them so they can freshen up.

“And for all the boys to freshen up and come back the following week ready to rumble against Wasps.”

But there is no doubt that last weekend’s defeat hurt for Saints, who had led for long periods before Tigers snatched the win with a late Lachlan McCaffrey try and the composed kicking of Owen Williams.

“Towards the end, I thought things were going our way,” Tuitavake said.

“And I thought we could close it out and hold them off but that’s the game of rugby but we just fell short at the end.

“The set piece was an issue but we’ve got a week off now to fix where we went wrong and finish strong with the last four games.

“There’s nothing we can do now, it’s gone and done.

“We had a few hurt boys in the changing room.

“It meant quite a lot just because of the rivalry between Leicester and Northampton Saints and I really feel for them, being new to the team.

“There are hurt boys in there.

“And we had Lee Dickson hit 250 games for Saints, it would have been nice to bring it home for him.”