SAINTS will use Sunday’s friendly against Castleford to assess their options at six and seven after losing Matty Smith with a significant leg injury.

And 20-year-old Danny Richardson is in line to have a crack at securing a half back role alongside Theo Fages after impressing during his stint against Widnes.

The former Halton Hornets junior, who was man of the match in last year’s Under 19s Grand Final, showed some fine touches, epitomised by the kick he placed for Saints’ third try.

Cunningham will weigh up the options, which could also include Tommy Lee and Jon Wilkin reverting there, but all the early soundings are that Richardson will get a fair crack at it.

If that happened it would, albeit temporarily, give Saints their youngest half back pairing since Lomaskell, when Jonny Lomax and Lee Gaskell guided Saints to Old Trafford in 2011.

Cunningham said: “It is something we are used to at this club, losing some important players but we have plenty of decent players around the juniors and sat on the sidelines.

“Danny did a fine job on Sunday and he will get another shot this week.

“Theo will, too, alongside a number of different people.

“We will find something that works.

“We have a lot of different options that we might have to play with over the next couple of weeks and see what works best for the team and works best for the immediate future.”

Having already stated that Lee’s role is to give back-up to James Roby and that he wants Wilkin to play the traditional loose forward role, as well as Cunningham commenting two weeks ago that Richardson was ready it would tick all the boxes if the youngster slotted in.

“Danny hasn’t been far away. Only a fool tries to hold something back and I’m not a fool.

“If he makes the team better we will filter him through and make sure it is the right thing for him and the team.”

Richardson has been in the junior ranks for four years.

The promise shown by the young Widnesian has not been lost on club captain Jon Wilkin who sees a special talent in the 20-year-old .

Wilkin said: “Danny is a great young player, with confidence strutting around. He is what you think a genuine half back should be like.

“He is cocky, borderline arrogant which I love.

“It has been a long time since I have seen a young kid come through like that.”

The team ticked over nicely on Sunday - a much better first hit out than for many a year which showed some promising features.

“On Sunday a lot of the good things we did revolved around Matty but I think James Roby and Tommy Lee did well as did the big four front rowers.

“Ryan Morgan looked like a threat every time he got the ball, which was obviously the reason we brought him over.

“We had an allocated game time for each player so he came off a couple of minutes early as a precaution.

“We did not want to push him through because he is not used to running on heavy tracks and the pitch was quite heavy earlier in the day so it was more safe to bring him off rather than be sorry for a few weeks. He will feature this week.

“Mark Percival and Jonny Lomax showed good touches and I thought Tommy Makinson looked like he was back to his old Tommy, really sharp and direct.

“If we had gone with our strongest side and kept rolling that 20, 21 players it would have blown out a bit.

“Now we have to polish up that little bit of clinical stuff on the end of things and we will get there.”