SCRUM half Lewis Dodd is determined to sign off his last few weeks as a Saints player in a positive manner before he boards the plane to Sydney.
The 22-year-old Widnesian, who departs Saints at the end of the season to take up a three-year deal with South Sydney Rabbitohs, returned to action last week in the win over Castleford.
It has been something of an in-out season for Dodd, who was dropped from the side in mid-July before suffering an elbow ligament injury on his second game back.
In his absence Saints had been operating with Moses Mbye in the halves, but his suspension last week meant Dodd slotted straight back in.
And there were positive signs, admittedly against a weak Castleford side, with the attacking spine of Dodd, Jonny Lomax and Jack Welsby clicking.
Coach Paul Wellens said: “Lewis wants to finish in a positive way, absolutely.
“Obviously, when he made the decision earlier on in the season to leave the club at the end of the year there was a lot of media attention around that.
“But in-house it's never really changed - Lewis is an integral part of what we're what we're about here at St Helens.
“I know he's had his challenges this year but if you cast your mind back to when I left him out of the team even then I stressed how confident I was that he was going to go on to be a premier half back in the game.
“I still believe that, and I think his performance last week was was excellent both defensively and offensively.
“He's determined to end his time at the club in the right way.”
Saints rattled in eight tries last week – and bombed a few more, but the coach preferred that problem of clinical execution to have rather than struggling to create that had been a feature of all the games against the top three in recent weeks.
Wellens said: “We created a number of opportunities last week, some that we took and some that we didn't.
“So again in terms of finding improvements, one of our improvements areas is to be a little bit more ruthless when we do get those opportunities.
“But at the same time in big games you don't get everything right.
“So we just want to find the improvements where we can.
“The pleasing aspect from my perspective, and I'm sure all the fans on the terraces agree too, is you didn't look at that performance last week thinking where the points were going to come from.
“There were loads of opportunities there and there was potential for more points than than probably what we got.”
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