MC: What benefits have the players got from having a break at this midway point in the Super League season?

KW: Straight after the Warrington game we gave all of the guys a good break and the players we are expecting to feature in the England v All Stars game got a bit longer than the others.

Everyone got a significant break to make sure we freshened them up to make sure their bodies and their minds had a good break.

They came back to training late last week and we were able to get a couple of sessions in where we were able to work on ourselves and then this week lead into Toulouse.

Most teams will be affected by the international in the middle of June, but we expect to be affected a little more than most that is something we all have to deal with but once we get through that we are on the home stretch as well.

We just have to get through this next block.

MC: No Saints players were selected in the All Stars initial squad – is that because of the number of players likely to play for England?

KW: There is a limit of six each club to be involved in the game and we have obviously got more than six possibly playing for England. That being the case we won’t have any of our blokes eligible for the All Stars.

MC: Looking at Toulouse, they are still doing everything they can to keep their spot in Super League?

KW: They are and that is exactly what we want – 12 teams in a comp who are all really competitive and ambitious and that is how we drive each other along as a competition.

That is how we see the standard of the competition keep improving.

I have said a number of times that I think in the three years I have been here that the competition has got a bit better every year.

And it is got better in each year from the two years before I arrived.

With Toulouse being competitive and aiming to be more competitive that helps that process as well.

MC: Obviously you won’t be doing them any favours this week but would you like to see Toulouse stay up?

KW: I would and I like the idea of expanding our game and from what I have seen of Toulouse I have been really impressed by them.

They play a good style of footy and last time we played them I said I really liked they were not out there to spoil and slow the game down, they actually came to play, chance their hand and it stuck for them and they played footy to win.

That was a really good sign for them and the way they prepared. The facilities and everything we saw looked like Super League standard.

At the end of the day what I do want to see more than anything is our competition keep getting stronger and more competitive and all teams being able to spend the full cap and that is how we are able to really drive our competition and our support as well.

And that would make it a bigger competition on the sporting landscape over here.

MC: There have been a flurry of retentions – but how tough is the challenge to keep players like Matty Lees and Jack Welsby in Super League when the NRL takes an interest?

KW: It is tough, we work on about a third of the salary cap of the NRL. The NRL have also got a new team that is trying to find 36 players for a new roster for next year. It is tough and becoming harder for those reasons.

In saying that – this is the challenge and your best players like Matty Lees, Jack Welbsy and Lewis Dodd and I could go on to past years like Alex Walmsley, Morgan Knowles and Jonny Lomax who all get plenty of interest from the NRL as well as from clubs over here.

It does have its challenges. Those two guys in particular (Lees and Welsby) while they would have both had a look to see what was around they were both very strong in what they wanted to do and continue at St Helens.

That came through in their interviews as well as they were both extremely happy and are both young players with their best football ahead of them and a big part of what we have built as a team and our culture here at the moment and are both in leadership positions and our leadership group as young men.

They are only going to develop in our system and see it that was as well.

While there are challenges, it was not a difficult one with those two as they wanted the same thing as I wanted as a coach. We all wanted the same thing as a club so it was easy to figure out the details.

MC: Jack Welsby already had two and half years to run, was that a smart pre-emptive strike by the club to upgrade and extend?

KW: It was a really smart move by the club. It means that we are doing the right thing by a player who is playing well above what his contract was.

By offering an upgrade and an extension, we are doing the right thing by him and in return he doesn’t want to look elsewhere.