SAINTS boss Kristian Woolf was pretty scathing about his side’s failings in their 44-12 reverse at Salford, highlighting in particular their drop off in “desire and commitment”.

The defeat was the heaviest a Woolf Saints side has ever suffered and comes hot on the heels of last week’s lacklustre performance at Wakefield.

The manner of the defeat – beaten in all areas – means that Saints will have to have a good long look to address the drop off in some key areas since they beat Huddersfield three weeks ago.

Woolf said: “Salford played really well and executed their plan really well and deserved a lot of credit. It was a great win for them but at the same time we are extremely disappointed.

“We hold ourselves to really high standards and show that every week and for whatever reason we haven’t done that today.

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“That is something we have to have a look at and figure out how we turn it around next week.”

Saints started poorly; making errors with the ball and ending the sets they did complete poorly.

It gave the Red Devils confidence – and once they realised they had found a few weak seams in the Saints defence they ruthlessly exploited it with a fine brand of attacking rugby.

It shattered Saints’ defensive impregnability – and only a late rally stopped them having a half century posted on them.

“We as a team pride ourselves on defence; hard work and effort and not getting beat in those areas – but unfortunately today we were.

“It is very uncharacteristic and well below our usual standards that we set for ourselves and what we have shown so many times this year.

“It is certainly not something I have seen coming either – so again we have to have a good look at that and be really honest with ourselves and figure out how we are going to turn around,” Woolf said.

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It was a similar story to last week where they gave Wakefield a 12-0 start, this week there was no coming back from a 32-0 lead at one stage and were well beaten.

“If you don’t start the game with the right attitude – and that showed in a lot of the early exchanges – it can certainly snowball and gets very hard to turn around.

“Last week we were good enough to turn it around and show good character there, today we weren’t.

“We were off in every department realistically; off with our defence, off with our effort and off with what we did with the ball and that showed really early.

When you get bits of opportunity like we got at the start of the game and then you cough the ball up really early and really easily then you usually make a hard day for yourself.

“We need to be better under those circumstances.

There have been plenty of games where we haven’t started well and been a little off with the ball in the early exchanges.

“But what we have had is that desire and commitment to make sure teams don’t score points but that is what we missed today.

“That performance needs to give us a kick up the backside and something to sink our teeth into in terms of taking a hard lesson and a good honest look at ourselves as to where we are at.

“The fact is we got away with one last week when we were off – so we have been off for two weeks in a row.

“What has turned around since the Huddersfield game I am not quite sure as to why we have dropped off but we need to turn it around really quickly,” Woolf said.