Saracens boss Mark McCall believes his team deserved their 17-16 Premiership win over Northampton despite the late intervention of the woodwork.
Saints fly-half Stephen Myler's valiant injury time penalty attempt, taken five metres from inside his own half, struck the cross-bar which ensured the victory for Sarries.
But a relieved McCall feels it was the right outcome as his side were more dominant.
"Of course it would have been a sick feeling to lose it at the end," McCall said.
"Sometimes you lose and that is fine but when you are on top, like we felt we were on top, it would have been disappointing.
"At the same time sometimes that is your own fault, if you have got ahead of yourselves and not done things quite right.
"I felt the same as everyone else felt. It was out of our hands. We knew it was a very difficult kick. It was an unbelievable strike in fairness.
"He had his kicking boots on today, didn't he? So we are grateful to have come away with a narrow victory."
Northampton director of rugby Jim Mallinder criticised referee JP Doyle's performance.
"I've already had a little look at the penalties on replay and the majority of those early on were probably just," he said.
"But the referee's got to be consistent and if he's going to penalise Dylan Hartley for going off his feet, quite rightly, he's got to do Brad Barritt at the end of the game as well. It's the same offence."
This defeat means Saints drop down to sixth position in the standings - two points adrift of the play-off places - but Mallinder is still optimistic about his team's title chances.
"The lads gave everything and it was a tremendous effort from them. I'm very proud. It went down to the wire, we just didn't get the bounce of the ball," he said.
"We'd like to be top of the league like every single club, but we're realistic and know that we haven't played as well as we'd have liked in every game.
"But we also know that we're a good side and today proved that. There's not a lot in the top teams. Even though we're in mid-table, we're not out of the running.
"There were will be a few people that have written us off. We quite like that and there's a long way to go. We're looking forward to the second half of the season."
Comments
Jediboy says...
I agree NHsaints. We are just not good enough this season. Consistently good enough anyway. Playing well every now and then isn't good enough and won't win you titles.
I believe that we will be doing well to make top 4 to be honest. The teams above us are better and more consistent at the moment. That said, I thought we were on a par with Sarries at the weekend. But we only got one point so thats academic now. We need the winning points, not just improved performances.
Posted 16:51 01st January 2013
NHsaints says...
I don't reckon we have the man-power or the home record this season to win the title but I still think we'll make the play-offs. A much improved performance, if we can just find consistency then matches like this and the one against Ulster can become the norm and we'll do as well if not better than we did 2-3 seasons ago.
Posted 12:38 31st December 2012
darthbok says...
got to hand it to Sarries -- N-hampton must have been desperate having been so rolled -over in the last few weeks -- and N-hampton must have thrown everything at this game -- if anyone can beat harlequins in a final, its Sarries or leicester
Posted 08:25 31st December 2012