SAINTS coach Keiron Cunningham was disappointed with Sunday’s defeat but saw no need to panic.

Here he spoke with the Star’s senior sports writer Mike Critchley.

MC: What are your thoughts after looking at the game again?

KC: I watched it again as soon as I got in on Sunday night and then went through it with a fine tooth comb on Monday, picking through everything. It was disappointing. It is easy for me to say that the scoreline did not justify the game.

I thought at times for the majority of the game we hung in there and did some really good stuff. It was a lot closer viewing it again than it was on the night.

But we have been on the other end of that, where we have blown the scoreline out.

You make your own luck but maybe had we got the bounce of the ball and a few decisions at the right time it would have made a difference.

If you get the rub of the green – Percy’s two tries may have been tries, and a few more calls at the right time the whole complexion of the game changes.

MC: In some ways it was similar to the 2003 World Club when Paul Newlove had an early try disallowed and then Roosters posted a similar scoreline?

KC: Because of what we were doing with the ball I felt we threatened them every time we had it. I went in at half time, even though we were 24-0 down, still thinking we were still in it.

Whether that is a St Helens mentality with playing at this great club for years – but I am forever the optimist – I genuinely believed we could have still won the game. It was a case of getting out there and scoring early, which unfortunately we did not do.

A few players let us down in a few areas and for some of the younger players it is a massive learning curve.

MC: Are the voices saying you should have included more experienced players for this big game being wise after the event?

KC: You have to move forward, if you get caught standing still in this game, people will go straight past you and the future of the club is in the youth.

Joe Greenwood had an outstanding game against a world class side – for me the whole pack of forwards were absolutely brilliant with the work they had to do.

I felt the outside backs let them down, and let them down dearly. There were 10 unforced errors by the outside backs and that is an extra 60 tackles. The loose carries and turnovers kill you.

At some point at the start of the game we had a 40 odd per cent completion rate in the first 20 minutes, it went up to 63 and then the second half it was 50 per cent.

That compares to 83-93 per cent from them. That is the difference in the sides.

MC: Some of the traits that were there against Catalans on the opening night reared their heads – you are not going to get away with them against Souths.

KC: We started poorly against Catalans and we dropped a bit of ball against Salford.

You can talk about it being early season and look around the comp and teams seem to be staggering through the same things.

You can only build into a season for so long. If you continue to do it against great teams, eg, Souths, you are going to get burned. We got what we deserved at times.

As much as I feel for my players and coaching staff, you have just got to do better in the right part of the game.

MC: Does the short five-day turnaround affect you this week? Do you look at freshening up some of those lads who grafted hard on Sunday?

KC: Obviously JT may be a doubt because of the concussion ruling. He was severely concussed and I may look front rower wise to see where we are at and what we can bring in. I am not going to panic and make rash decisions because of one result.

If that was consistently poor, losing round one, two and then this then I would have to look at my team and see what I could change for the benefit of the club.

I am comfortable where we are at. We got beat by a very good team – hindsight is a great thing and I look back at the tape with a lot of ‘if onlys’ in there.

MC: Any consolation in the fact that this is what Souths have done to teams in the NRL – they posted a 24 points margin against the Bulldogs in the final last year?

KC: On a brighter note in the whole thing, I wanted to look after the Burgess boys and Greg Inglis and we did a great job on all of those players.

Defensively – and this sounds stupid because they posted 39 points – we were good. Our structure was only broken down once and that was for the Inglis try on the inside.

They scored 18 off kicks and some of those they got the bounce of the ball, but that is rugby league and you sometimes make your own luck.

MC: Do you have any issue with the disallowed Mark Percival tries?

KC: Maybe the first one you just don’t know. The ref is there and he gives a try for both and they both got over ruled by the video ref.

It is unfortunate – but if things were going our way they would be two no brainer tries and we would have gone in with a different game altogether.