A sell-out crowd at Welford Road saw Tigers claim the only try of the match, with Matt Smith latching on to a break from Vereniki Goneva to score in the early moments of the second half in a tight and tense local derby.
“I think it was all about winning today with players missing from both sides,” said director of rugby Cockerill.
“It is a good win for us under the circumstances. It was important we got the result. It’s a game we had to win.
“At half-time we said he needed to be a bit more direct and within two minutes we scored a try from doing exactly that.
“Scott Hamilton had a tight quad so we made the decision to take him off at half-time and send on Vereniki who was a bit frustrated that I’d left him out. But he took it with good grace and he proved a point. We wanted that kind of reaction.
“The try came from a good phase of play, Marcos Ayerza ran hard and got us on the front foot, George Ford found the inside pass for Vereniki and it was a nice offload for Matt Smith to score.”
Tigers are in third place in the Aviva Premiership table, with the top five teams separated by just five points as the league programme takes a rest for the next two weeks.
“Saints are a good side, a hard side to beat so I’m very happy with the win,” added Cockerill.
“We’re in the top four, we’re in quite a good position going into the break from Premiership fixtures and we still feel we can get better.”
Louis Deacon was replaced due to injury in the first half, but Tigers were happy with the way a much-changed side stuck to the task.
“We had some young guys in there, some players who haven’t had much game-time and there were a lot of changes from last week, which can make it hard for you,” said Cockerill.
“Deacs got a bang on the back and said he could feel it stiffen up. With Deacs it is all or nothing in the way he wants to play, but he was big enough to say it wasn’t quite right. Ed Slater went on and did a decent job.
“Graham Kitchener is a young man learning his trade and he had to run the lineout for us, we had Julian Salvi back and he did a really good job and I thought Richard Thorpe did some good things too in the back row. Castro was really good too, he played his heart out and showed the type of bloke he is. He showed a lot of leadership in there.”
Ben Youngs came through the game after missing last week’s defeat at Gloucester, getting the game-time he required before returning to the England camp this week.
“[England head coach] Stuart Lancaster manages the situation very, very well,” said Cockerill. “He trusts us to manage the player. It was a tough game for Ben, the ball was slow from the breakdown and he didn’t get much of a chance to show his pace, but it was only his fourth start of the season and now he has another 80 minutes under his belt.”
