“Going in to today our outlook was to win all three of our home games, and I don’t see today as the end of the road for our season, it’s very much a case of one down two to go.”

Assessing the match itself, he added: “I’m pleased with the result but not the performance, because we can play a lot better than that. Having said that, we’ve played a lot better than that and lost this season, so we’ll take the ‘W’ and move on.

“It’s actually a very flat changing room down there, because the boys know they didn’t play as well as they can. I’ve told them just to go out and smile because they’ve won. That’s what the game is about, winning, and even when you don’t put all the pieces of the game together you have to enjoy winning as a team.”

With a full house at Kingston Park witnessing only two tries on the day, Fletcher said: “It wasn’t a great spectacle because of the stop-start nature of the match.

“We seemed to be very nervous, I don’t know why, but we lost our shape pretty early which was very disappointing. Northampton produced a lot of off-the-cuff rugby which did threaten us, but it meant a game with lots of mistakes and not a great deal of flow for the supporters to enjoy.”

One cause for celebration was the driving play of the Falcons pack and a rock solid line out, both of which were contributing factors in their only try from Toby Flood only seven minutes in.

“It was a super try from a really good driving line out, which is something Peter Walton has worked very hard for,” said Fletcher.

“Toby finished it off extremely well and it looked like being the foundation for a big performance. We should have built on it, but Northampton played with a lot of spirit and never really gave us the space to get going.”

One downside for the Falcons was the early withdrawal of Mathew Tait with knee trouble, as Fletcher explained: “He had been carrying a bit of a bang from Clermont last week and he just caught it again, but we brought on John Rudd who is a good player and made a fine contribution when he came on.”

Hailing his side’s defensive resolve in the face of persistent Northampton attack, Fletcher said: “It was a mixed bag really in defence, because we dropped off a few tackles but then we scrambled extremely well to cope when they got in behind us.

“The work rate of the side was incredible, but I thought Jonny Wilkinson’s defensive effort today was staggering, along with Ben Woods and Jamie Noon in particular. Their tackle count was through the roof, and that’s a side of Jonny’s game that people don’t often comment on, his fitness and willingness to get up and make the next tackle.

“His penalty with 15 minutes left settled the nerves a bit because it meant they had to score twice, but it was a disappointing half on the whole because we just didn’t manage the game well.”