SAINTS boss Kristian Woolf has praised the toughness of scrum half Theo Fages after he tried to battle through the first half at Wembley.

A couple of uncharacteristic errors from the French skipper showed that all was not right, and he came off at half time.

Fages had needed a pain-killing injection on his shoulder before the game – something the coach suspects may have caused the problem.

Woolf said: “It was quite obvious he was not quite right in the first half, but he’s tough and he wanted to battle on.

“I haven’t quite got to the bottom of it but I think the injection might have gone wrong a little bit and he had numbness in his arm. You saw a couple of times where he went to throw a pass and just didn’t have the power and had no feeling in his arm.

“I can’t praise Theo enough - his willingness to stay out there, making tackles and keeping trying and scoring the first try.

“He had the problem really early in the piece and battled through it.

“He made the right decision at half time – he felt like he was letting the group down but he knew he wasn’t doing his job.

“We were lucky to have Jack Welsby on the bench to do as he has done many times, wherever we put him he does an outstanding job.”