SAINTS are now back to a full complement of players with the this week’s pre-season return of their quintet of England World Cup players.
Tommy Makinson, Jack Welsby, Morgan Knowles, Matty Lees and Joe Batchelor are all back on the training paddock – seven weeks after England’s campaign ended at the semi-final stages against Samoa.
Coach Paul Wellens was delighted to have them back, and remarked on the noticeable uplift that having players of this calibre has had on the rest of the group.
Wellens, in his first pre-season as head coach, said: “I was really pleased with the way a lot of our young lads have improved in the first four or five weeks of pre-season.
“What I always felt, once those England lads came back in after Christmas, was that they would going to take the quality and intensity to another level.
“That has been the case so far this week.
“They are international players for a reason and it is great to have them back involved.
“The standard will continue to improve throughout the next few weeks.”
It can often be tough on those elite players, bouncing from a long Super League season and then into the intensity of playing the NRL’s elite in the World Cup, only pausing for a short break before the cycle begins again.
But Wellens backs his players to once again overcome this challenge with flying colours after their spell of rest and physical and mental recuperation.
“Obviously, it is a shortened pre-season for those lads, but we have every confidence in them, given their experience and how good they are at looking after themselves, to put themselves in a great position physically to hit the ground running,” Wellens said.
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