JACK Owens says he thanks his coaches and teammates for helping him to find his feet in the red V, by Mike Parsons.

In a side struggling for consistency in the first half of the year, the 22-year-old had some difficulties settling in following his arrival from hometown club Widnes.

That has all changed now, with head coach Keiron Cunningham full of praise for his contributions to the team from the wing and the fans even chanting “Owens for England” in the win at Warrington on Thursday.

“Jack was one of the stand-out performances of the Saints team (at Warrington),” said Cunningham.

“Look at what he does off the ball and with the ball, and how good he is defensively, and how good he works at the back of the field.”

Owens, who started the season at full back during the absence of Jonny Lomax, said: “When I left Widnes I was really looking forward to giving it a good go here.

“I knew I was starting full back and since Jonny’s come back, that’s helped my game massively.

“He’s such a clever player and he speaks to you constantly about positioning, when to drop back, when to stay up the field, where to be in attack. He’s helped me out a lot, which I’m grateful for.

“It’s going well for me now. You’ve got to go through some rough times to get to potentially the good times if we can keep moving forward.

“I’m starting to show a bit more confidence now. I’m trying to do the little things well, trying to get my carries up, trying to get the forwards on the front foot if I can.

“It sometimes doesn’t happen but I’m trying my best. That’s all I’m going to keep doing.

“Having one of the coaches give you praise it’s always nice to hear.

“They’ve just been telling me to keep working hard and I’m just going to keep doing that – for them and all the players.

“In the first half of the season I wasn’t happy with my performances.

“I was slowly getting there but just making silly errors.

“The lads were behind me, Keiron was behind me. He took me out of the team for a few weeks to take me out of the firing line.

“I’m starting to come good now. I’ve got the trust of whoever is inside me, whether it’s Dom Peyroux as against Warrington or young Matty Fleming, who had played brilliantly for the past few weeks.

“My performances are similar to the team. We’re working hard for each other and we’re not going to let anyone down. We’re just going to try to keep on improving each week.”

He is grateful to the fans for backing him, too, despite frustrations being vented towards team performances in the first half of the season.

“It was fair enough for the fans to have got frustrated but to be fair they’ve stuck with us,” he said.

“Now we’re coming good towards the business end of the year.

“One thing we do mention a lot though is that we can’t get ahead of ourselves.

“We know we’re only fourth on the ladder and we’re having to work really hard to climb up this table.

“I just thank the fans for keep on turning up. Come again next week and the week after, and we’re going to keep working for each other and for them.”

He says the fourth versus fifth battle with Catalans Dragons tomorrow, Friday, is no more of a crunch fixture than last week’s or next week’s.

“For us, every game is like a Grand Final now.”