Erratic Saints pay the price

After conceding two tries to an Exiles outfit that belied their lowly league position to dominate the opening 30 minutes, the Saints struck with three quality tries from Ken Pisi, George North and Kahn Fotuali’i.

But once they were in front Saints failed to see out the last 15 minutes, conceding penalties and field position, and ultimately the penalty try which decided the outcome.

Mallinder was clearly frustrated and disappointed with the inconsistency of the performance in his post-match media commitments.

“At times there was some good rugby and we scored some good tries,” he told SaintsTV, “but at other times we were very, very average. We weren’t physical enough at the breakdown, which allowed them to get onto the front foot in the first half, and some of our discipline was poor, allowing them to get into the game.

“We need to improve a lot. Mindset is a big thing. We’ve shown one week when we’ve come up against a massive, quality side like Racing that we can compete with them and we dominated a lot of the game last week.

“But then you need to back that up, and that’s something we didn’t do today. You need to bring that mentality with the physicality, but you also need accuracy as well, and there were lots of parts of our play which weren’t good enough and where we expect them to be.”