Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall praised his side's resolve during their 25-23 win at Newcastle Falcons but accepted they had made life harder than necessary on Saturday.

Tries from Chris Ashton and Neil de Kock were added to by replacement Nick Tompkins, whilst Owen Farrell kicked ten points for Sarries at Kingston Park.

Speaking afterwards, McCall said: "We did well to come back from a few set backs throughout the game. In the last ten minutes we made a lot of poor decisions during that time, but overall this is a difficult place to come and on a difficult day when they announced they had their biggest crowd in over six years.

"Having gone 13-10 down I thought our response was terrific.

"Overall, I was pleased with a lot of things that happened. We should have seen the game out quite comfortably to be honest, and we didn’t quite manage that."

He added: "I think the things that served us so well in the 70 minutes seemed to go out the window in that last ten. Credit to Newcastle, they took advantage of our slackness in that period, but I don’t want that to sour what was a very good 70 minutes that I was very pleased with."

Sarries rise to third in the Premiership standings and face London Irish at Allianz Park on Saturday, January 3.