KEIRON Cunningham says he can see signs that could help Saints be successful in the remainder of this season, writes Mike Parsons.

The backing of the fans, the growing confidence of his squad, players returning from injury and the work done while playing no part in the Challenge Cup semi finals weekend are all positive pointers for the Saints boss.

And that all leads into a Super 8s Round One clash with a buoyant Wembley-bound Warrington, who have nevertheless only managed on their own patch to take points off Saints four times in 21 years of Super League.

“The rest has been good and we’ve freshened a few people up,” said Cunningham, who has Dominique Peyroux available for the first time since collecting a leg injury at Wakefield on July 3.

“There’s probably people who will play who probably wouldn’t have played last weekend. Having a week off the collision, it definitely does help some bodies.

“We gave the lads a break early last week. Then we got a fair bit of conditioning work into them which we probably wouldn’t have been able to do if we’d played at the weekend.

“And that led to being in on Sunday, for which I don’t think I was the most popular bloke but you’ve got to do that when preparing for a Thursday game.

“I’d like to think the conditioning work will be of benefit beyond this game but it’s mainly a top up for what we have been doing.”

Cunningham said that half back Theo Fages is only a couple of weeks away from a return too as Saints look to build on the momentum gained from five straight wins.

“In two or three weeks we’ll be as fit as we’re going to be this year,” he said.

“It’s pleasing when you’re finding a bit of form and you’ve got bodies coming back. It definitely helps, and we have definitely been in far worse situations. And there’s probably a few teams around us in worse situations.

“It just gives me bigger selection headaches, though they are good headaches.”

He said maintaining the defensive improvements of late, which were highlighted in the magnificent win at Wigan last time out, are key in the seven games to come against fellow top-eight sides.

“It had been coming for a while that display,” he said.

“As crazy as it sounds, the game at Wakefield probably set that up. There was nearly 80 points in that game but the way we defended that final period has led every week since to us having a belief in what we are doing.

“You could see it in the way we won the Widnes game, and the way we won the games after that. A lot of it was around defence, especially Huddersfield away where we defended large periods on our line and came home with a good victory.

“The thing with sport and especially rugby league is that it is a full season. Everybody’s going to have lots of ups and downs along the way and we’d have liked a lot more ups than what we’ve had.

“We are where we are, we’ve managed to squeak into the four. Our biggest challenge now is to take each round at a time to try and maintain where we are at.”

And he acknowledges the part the fans are playing and can continue to be influential.

“The fans have been fantastic. Between us all, we have this realisation it isn’t us and them – we’re a collective.

“And the town and everybody has got behind the team for large periods of all of the games in which we’ve been on this bit of a roll.

“The fans have played a large part in that, especially the Wigan game when they were immense.

“It was the first game for a long time that I was jealous that I wasn’t part of it in a shirt, with hearing the fans in full roar and driving the team on. It was good, I was proud to be involved in that.

“We’ve given the fans a good showing for a few weeks now. We’ve probably got to the best position we could be from where we’d come from.

“We’ve given ourselves four home games and the fans are going to play a large part in us doing something well this year. So hopefully we can reward them.

“Winning does become a habit and the boys have a lot of belief in what they’re doing at the moment so it’ll definitely be a good round one for us.”