London Irish 37 Northampton Saints 22: Tom Vickers' review and player ratings

Because that result at Tigers back in January is increasingly looking like a miraculous anomaly in Saints’ season.

On that day at Mattioli Woods Welford Road, Saints displayed a resilience that simply hasn’t been present in any of their other Premiership matches on the road this season.

They gritted their teeth to claim a memorable 19-18 success borne out of defensive desire and real discipline.

When they needed to relieve pressure, they did so.

And when they needed to take their chances, they did so.

It was only their second league win on the road in the Premiership during the current campaign and the other, at Wasps, counted for little after the Coventry club went into administration.

Even that 40-36 victory at the CBS Arena came after Saints shipped a huge amount of points, an alarming trend that has continued week after week, month after month.

Defensively, they remain by far the worst team in the league.

They have shipped 577 points in 18 league games, and that becomes 613 in 19 matches if you include the Wasps encounter. That's an eye-watering average of more than 32 points per outing.

And they could easily have lost by more than the 15 points that they did on Saturday evening.

London Irish fluffed several chances on a night when there was only one team in it.

They had 80 per cent territory in the first half and that trend largely continued after the break as Saints struggled to get out.

The black, green and gold just had no way of turning the tide.

There are various tools you can use to do that, including winning penalties at the set piece, securing turnovers at the breakdown and delivering consistently dominant collisions.

But Saints have not been able to do any of the above away from home on a regular basis this season, aside from in that teak-tough win at Tigers.

It has meant that wave after wave of pressure has come their way.

And they have not been strong enough defensively to deal with it, missing far too many tackles across the board.

They have continued to ship penalty after penalty, serving to pile pressure on themselves rather than relieve it.

And it made for a really one-sided encounter against an Irish side who played at a pace that their visitors couldn't live with for much of the night.

What made it all the more frustrating was that on the rare occasions Saints did actually get into the home 22, they looked dangerous and Irish looked porous.

But they couldn't get near the home line enough, and after scoring sucker-punch tries, the same old problems occurred.

Lineouts were lost, poor decisions were made and penalties were conceded, meaning any platform that could have been laid was lost.

On a night when they knew they really needed to show an away-day spark and quell the fizz of Irish’s St Patrick’s Party, Saints fell flat.

The black, green and gold style has been no substitute for the substance you need to win in tough environments.

And, as fans had always feared, that terrible away form has come back to haunt them in their bid to make the top four.

They are not alone in their travel sickness though, as shown by the fact that every home team won in the Premiership over the weekend.

The likes of Gloucester and Exeter Chiefs suffered arguably even more dispiriting defeats, showing just how tough it is to prevail away from home.

But if you want to make the play-offs, you have to be able to stand tall in crucial moments under real scrutiny.