SAINTS chairman Eamonn McManus has hailed coach Justin Holbrook’s impact not just on the team but also on the town as a whole.

The club was in a bad place in Spring 2017 - performing poorly on the pitch and with discontent and rancour rumbling on the terraces.

The transformation under Holbrook this past year has been a revelation, with Saints currently six points clear of Wigan at the Super League summit and 80 minutes away from a first Wembley appearance in 10 years.

Although no silverware has been handed over yet, McManus is pleased to see “youth, speed and talent” deliver, entertain the crowds and heal the divisions that had grown over a period of years.

He said: “We are winning, but more importantly we are entertaining and people want to watch the team, win, lose or draw to be honest.

“Justin has been great; he has changed not just the playing side but he has had a huge effect on the entire club and the town.”

The chairman explained that it had been a torrid time at the helm of the club, prior to making that big decision to change direction with a new coach.

The club’s leadership faced plenty plenty of criticism in that time from the discontented supporters, and McManus describes it as a “very difficult period” for a couple of years.

He said: “We had chosen Keiron and had to back him but there came a time where we had to change.

“It was just awful, personally, for me because I had put 17 years of my life and an awful lot of money into the club but there was a lot of understandable unpleasantness.

“If I was a fan and watching those types of performances I wouldn’t have been happy either.

“I am not saying the fans were being unreasonable – they were doing exactly what I would have done, but that doesn’t make it any more pleasant.”

The arrival of Holbrook coupled with the signing of Australian superstar Ben Barba began to lift that mood.

Although there has been some tweaking of the squad, with the obvious exception of Barba, this is the same crop of players that Holbrook has utilised.

And the wholesale cull that had been called for when Saints were languishing in the mid table has not been deemed necessary.

McManus added: “I never thought 14 months ago that we had a major rebuilding job on our hands.

“If you look back at my quotes from the time I kept stating that we had the team.”

The chairman has vowed to keep improving the team, but admits to being lucky to have secured the services of top quality NRL players like Barba and, from next season, Kevin Naiqama.

He said: “We are going to continue in the vein of only wanting to improve.

“All we can do is make sure we have the best quality team out there on the pitch within the parameters of the salary cap.

“Things have fallen for us this last year or two – Ben Barba had come out of the blue and Kevin Naiqama coming up does not happen very often.

“We have had some luck. We have had to pay for it, but have been lucky with it.

“The previous two years we had been prepared to pay but the players were not there for it to happen.

“Our job is to get the best players out there and give the best environment to supporters – but the supporters themselves have got to get behind us for this to continue.

“Players like Ben Barba only come along once in a couple of generations.”

The speculation linking the Australian full back with a return to the NRL grates on him - and fears it being self-fulfilling.

“He has a two-year contract, but suddenly the chatter is that he is going back – without any substance to it.

“Fiction is created but that is in danger of creating fact – it is suddenly in his mind and it is alerting Australian clubs.

“Let me make it clear – Ben is contracted to St Helens for 2019, he is very happy here as well.”

The performances of Barba and co on the pitch have lifted the mood and the numbers off it, reversing a downward trend.

McManus said: “We are up massively on last year because it had really dived as the season went on.

“It is now back to what it was a couple of years ago, but had we not done what we did it would have dived further from last year and we would have been looking at 5-6,000 crowds.”

Saints have never been the sort of club to order the open-topped buses before the silverware is handed over - and the big games are all in front of them.

But nevertheless McManus is pleased with the year so far.

“All we can do is play, week on week, hopefully win, entertain.

“We have got what everyone has been crying out for, we have got youth, speed and talent – and that is going to carry on for a few years,” he said.