Fin Smith discusses Saints' win at Glasgow, a backline of best mates, Courtney Lawes' confidence and more...

During it, he talked about the keys to the victory, Tommy Freeman's two-try heroics, Courtney Lawes' confidence in this Saints side and more.

Here is the interview in full…

Q: How do you feel about that performance?

A: "We were delighted.

"We hadn't won for a long time in Europe and we had a massive emphasis on ourselves going up there.

"We wanted to try to be physical because we know Glasgow are a big side, they'd won a lot of games at home and we just came out firing.

"We shocked ourselves a little bit with how well we came out of the blocks.

"We did our best to try to lose it at the end, but it was a really great win on the road."

Q: What was the key to that win?

"The big thing is our defence because we're fronting up so much better.

"Our maul defence and our scrum are really starting to turn up to the party.

"The Northampton of old would probably score a few tries and concede a few more so we're really trying to change that narrative. We're doing well with that.

"We went to Sarries, a massively tough place to go, and going to Glasgow is a tough place to go, but we fronted up twice.

"We're hopefully turning the tide a little bit."

Q: Saints had lost 10 successive Champions Cup matches before Friday - did that play on your minds?

A: "We didn't speak about it but at the back of everyone's minds, we sort of knew.

"It's pretty embarrassing, not having won for a few years, and we wanted to change that around.

"The way we started the year, we felt we could actually come and compete this year, and we're happy we've done that.

"We're feeling good, very confident in ourselves.

"Courtney (Lawes) was saying during the week that he's not felt this confident in a Saints side in a while, and I think with the way we're playing, you can hopefully see that."

Q: How is it playing alongside someone like Courtney Lawes?

A: "He's not bad, is he?

"Having him on the pitch is so important and playing with someone like that is so cool.

"He's an unbelievable player and when he starts speaking, the whole room listens.

"We get a massive amount of confidence and when he feels good, we all feel good."

Q: How good was it to win on the road?

A: "We always back ourselves at home so to get that win away and get that off our backs, we can go back to the Gardens this week and hopefully have a massive spring in our step and hopefully keep up the good form."

Q: Tommy Freeman produced a really good performance. What did you make of it?

A: "We were rooming together in Glasgow so I'll take credit for it!

"He's done so well moving from the wing to 13. It's underrated how difficult it is to do that.

"He's a big boy, probably a lot bigger than he looks, and he runs hard.

"He broke so many tackles and he's been really good for us all year.

"He actually said on the morning of the game 'I think I might get man of the match tonight' so I'm a bit gutted he actually did because he'll be well happy with himself now!"

Q: The Saints backline seems to function so well. What are the reasons for that?

A: "I like to think we're a fairly smart rugby team. We talk about the game a lot.

"(Saints head coach) Sam Vesty's done a brilliant job talking about how we want to play and some of our running lines and the delay in some of our play really came to fruition, even in tough conditions.

"We're all best mates from nine to 15. We spend so much time together away from the place.

"Just talking about rugby is something we all love doing and the way we're playing at the minute, it's hard not to be getting on.

"If we were losing a lot, we'd be arguing a bit more!

"We love attacking, we really enjoy doing it and Sam Vesty's doing a brilliant job with us all."

Q: Your handling was so good in tough conditions. What did you make of it?

A: "The way we like to attack, we want to keep all the passes short and make the attackers come and tackle us rather than throwing long ones that will allow them to linespeed us.

"You expect to make a few mistakes in the wet and we were pretty good.

"We got away with a few bits of loose play towards the end of the game but we're really delighted with how we attacked and looked after the ball in conditions like that."

Q: How were you able to excel as a team at the breakdown and keep the ball moving?

A: "We highlighted them trying to hold us up so we had a big focus on trying to drop our body height to almost not make it a collision and just get to floor.

"We knew our speed of ball would be good on the back of that and we did a brilliant job of that."