SAINTS boss Keiron Cunningham has accused his Warrington counterpart Tony Smith of "sour grapes" over comments arising after Thursday’s match.

Smith had told the post match press conference that the injury to Wolves’ young prop Ben Evans, who was taken off and needed surgery to repair a ruptured hamstring, was caused his leg being lifted in the tackle.

"Leg-lifting, and in particular, single leg-lifting, is a really unnecessary style of tackle and for Ben it is a pretty poor outcome," Smith said.

The RFL match review panel, who study all games in detail, saw nothing wrong the challenge made by skipper Jon Wilkin in the 52nd minute of the match.

In its report it stated the following as the reason for no further action: “Player takes hold of leg of opponent in order to complete tackle. Does not take leg beyond natural range of movement.”

Today Cunningham hit back at the Wolves boss for the way he apportioned blame and defended that tactic of leg lifting.

“At this club if you do anything malicious in the tackle then you won’t play the week after,” Cunningham said.

“It (underhand tactics) is not something we coach and you see nobody has ever gone long term with things that my players have done, unlike some other clubs.

“The reason we coach lifting a leg is to control a tackle, and that is so we don’t get blokes running in from 20 metres, shooting at knees, snapping legs and writing players off for the rest of the season.

“For me lifting the leg is one of the safest ways of controlling a tackle and unfortunately he (Evans) has just landed in a bad position and that is nothing to do with my players.

“What has happened to him is really unfortunate and my heart goes out to the kid.

“It is a tough game we play and everything is on a knife edge all the time. In that case it was unfortunate that his other foot slipped and he ended up in a bad position, but that was not purposely done by my players.

“But for Tony to say that afterwards was just sour grapes. He is disappointed - and I understand that - but I think he knows as well as anyone else that we are not a dirty club and we don’t go out to use tactics to injure players like some other clubs do.”

Cunningham was disappointed, not simply at the suggestion of wrong-doing in leading to the player’s injury, but the effect that it has had in taking some of the gloss of Saints’ victory.

“It frustrates me because it takes the highlight away from how well my boys performed. Tony’s team got outplayed on the day – but that is not my issue.

“I was taught as a kid to win and lose gracefully - and for me Tony Smith has not lost gracefully there. I respect Tony as a person and as a coach, but I just think if he’s going to pick holes in things then he could have picked something else.

“My players haven’t gone out to purposely hurt that kid. It is unfortunate what has happened but Tony needs to look at the true facts of the game,” Cunningham said.