SAINTS coach Paul Wellens was bitterly disappointed with his side's performance and the manner of their Challenge Cup exit.

Warrington Wolves out-played, out-muscled and out-enthused an off-colour Saints side that for the second week in a row was made to pay for basic handling errors and impatience with the ball.

This week that was compounded by some flaky defence which meant Saints were second best for most of the game even before the score ran away to 31-8.

Clearly shocked by what he had just witnessed Wellens said: "It is very disappointing.

"A Challenge Cup quarter final and for a team that usually rises to the challenge in big games I think we got the opposite of that today.

"Watching the game sometimes, some of the things I'm seeing is quite the opposite to what we've practised in the week.

"We need to be smarter in the way we handle certain situations, but I thought we got out enthused by our opposition today.

"Out-enthused at home in a Challenge Cup quarter final and that doesn't sit well with me."

Warrington started strongly, displaying a line-speed and aggression that is usually the trademark of Saints. 

And that rattled Saints, and forced them into a spiral of even more mistakes - which were eventually capitalised on.

"We just gave them far too much opportunity and we still need to be better there defensively to hold them out but we didn't learn any lessons at all from last week and we spoke about it all week," Wellens said.

"But there was an amount of times we just gave up cheap possession again and tried to force things.

"There were so many moments in the game where we just made ourselves be the team that got to do all the work and then he told in the end.

"It's extremely disappointing. I obviously didn't come here expecting that today – I expected us to respond from a disappointing result last week and we didn't manage that.

"I've got to do a bit of soul searching, look at it and try and get better, but ultimately we're out of the cup and that's a huge disappointment."