Wales wing George North came back to haunt his former regional rivals by bagging four tries in the 34-6 bonus-point beating.
The Liberty Stadium team saw their unbeaten record smashed at Franklin’s Gardens – after they had claimed six wins from their six Guinness PRO12 outings – but Gibbes reckons his side can use the European humbling as a learning experience.
He said: “The positive is we’re still in the competition fighting. The most important thing is what happens next and from a European perspective we have Racing at home.
“We’ll have to make sure we take the lessons from the Northampton game and apply them because there’s still a good opportunity for us.”
The Swansea region will look to get their European journey back-on-track when they welcome French heavyweights Racing Metro to South Wales in December.
Pool Five is finely poised. The Paris side sit at the summit with eight points with Ospreys and Northampton locked on five points apiece. And Gibbes reckons they can stamp out the errors that saw them take a step back in the Champions Cup chase.
He said: “The pool is still alive and we still believe we are a good side, even if we didn’t play well at times on Saturday. The plus is that stuff that was going wrong is all in our control. We can get that bit right and learn from the pressure of what it means to play at this level.
“Northampton are a good side, but we made them look good in certain aspects. We are a good side when we get going and there were parts of the match when we did pretty well. We just didn’t do it for long enough.”
