KRISTIAN Woolf said he was proud of the effort from his Saints players in the 30-10 loss at Wigan last night, leaving them still needing a point to clinch the League Leaders’ Shield.

He highlighted where he felt his team needs to improve in the coming weeks, though that was being said knowing his side was depleted with almost ‘a third of his squad’ sat in the stands unavailable.

Last night, Joe Batchelor played in the centres for the first time in Saints colours and Josh Simm featured on the wing after being recalled from his loan spell with Hull FC.

“I’m proud of the effort we put in,” he said.

“I thought we tried really hard and I thought there were really long periods where physically we were doing a great job.

“In terms of earning our opportunities we were doing a great job and the fact of the matter is when we earned some of those opportunities we made too many errors, we pushed too many things, and we came up with a couple of poor defensive plays, particularly in that first half. I don’t mind the couple of runaways at the end because that can happen. A couple of those tries in the first half just weren’t quite our standard.

“We’ll certainly learn from that. I think we’ll learn more out of that game than Wigan will. We’ve got a couple of learnings some of our young blokes in particular will take from that and it’s going to put us in a better position going forward.”

It was suggested to Woolf in his post-match press conference that if his side had taken some of their early chances it could have been a different game, but as it was Wigan took control by establishing an 18-2 half-time lead.

“Yes, that’s right. We were held up over the line three or four times,” he said.

“So we created enough opportunity but credit needs to go to Wigan too because they got numbers in the frame a number of times to help have tries disallowed. When they got their opportunities they made us pay so that was the difference in the game.

“We would have loved to have won. We threw the best side out there that we had available.

“Our aim was to win it and I think the effort that our blokes played with certainly showed that’s what the aim was.

“We’ll take a lot of learnings from it and see it as a little bit of a similar situation to 2020 where we got beat by Wigan (last game in the league rounds). We learned a lot out of that game and we were able to turn it around. (beat Wigan in the Grand Final) “We didn’t lose by quite the same margin, so there’s obviously more to turn around, but we’re certainly going to take a lot of learnings, with a lot of things that we’ll improve and we’ll be a different proposition the next time round. We’ll certainly have four or five guys to add to the team that will make a difference as well.”

Woolf was asked for his thoughts on Simm’s performance upon his return to the side on the right wing in place of the injured Tommy Makinson.

“I thought that was a great game of footy for him and I thought it was one of the best games of footy he’s played for the club at this level,” said Woolf.

“He was put under a lot of pressure. He had to take some really testing kicks, he had to come up with a couple of really good defensive reads, he ran the ball really hard and he’s one of the young blokes who I think should take a lot of confidence from that game, looking at how well he competed and learn a lot from it as well.”