SAINTS coach Paul Rowley was bitterly disappointed with the errors and ill-discipline that contributed to his side’s 30-10 defeat at Castleford Tigers.
Here is what he said in the post-match press conference.
Q: If I said it was an awful performance, would I be right?
PR: It was, absolutely. Nobody'd argue with you there. So to elaborate, why was it awful? Well, double figures in errors, double figures in penalties.
They contribute to fatigue. That contributes to physicality.
And I just thought, you're never going to regain momentum in the game, and I say it every week about momentum, because Cas had it for the entire 80 minutes, so credit to them.
Q: What went wrong?
PR: It was a strong team, like I said before, if you want to keep turning over the ball cheaply with unforced errors, then you're going to contribute to your own downfall. That's what we did, unfortunately.
That does happen every now and again. but still you've got to be able to defend that.
But it's tough. I don't think the lads lacked effort, certainly in that first half coming at our time, remarkably not as far behind as I thought we should have been in terms of territory, possession, all those things.
So we went out with belief, but the same copy and paste for us and same copy and paste for them.
They played direct, physically, good in offence and defence and we wasn't. But like I said before, the errors and the penalties contribute to the fatigue and so on and so forth.
Q: You tried the rotation, you tried to put people on, you Jonny Lomax on. Was it just one of those days where nothing was going to work?
PR: No because of the things I just said.
Q: So there's nothing you could do to change that?
PR: Well, I'm a part of it, we win together, we lose together, so that's how it works. But the rotations, so to speak, weren't to try and change the game. We were getting some bumps out there as well due to the physicality.
Q: Was that a big shock to see that performance. The way you played?
PR: You never plan for that, at anytime.
Q: We've been talking about the wins you've had and the way you've been digging out wins. Was that possibly the end of that, where you've just had too bad performance, too much to do?
PR: I can only repeat what I've just said. I've answered what you've asked and that's the answer.
Q: No way of changing momentum when you're up against the energy battle, but there was nothing there to change the momentum, whether it was a big carry or doing something special among the backs. Is it just that a product of what you're up against?
PR: The way to change momentum is score the first points in the second-half, which we did, catch the ball, which we didn't, and have a solid set after points, which we didn't.
So if you was to pick a series of 60 seconds, 2 minutes out of the whole game to sum up the whole game, then that would probably be it.
You change momentum by completing and defending tough and backing yourself in that arm wrestle. But we didn't do that for the reasons I just stated.
Q: They seemed to have so much more enthusiasm. I think you warned on in the week that if you caught him on this sort of form, they could burn you and they did?
PR: We could play Blackbrook under 12s and give them that much possession and we will get burned, so let's not get carried away.
Ten errors and 10 penalties against, and it's Super League, so we shouldn't be shocked by giving somebody a lion’s share of possession and territory in the hottest game of the year to get hurt by it.
And so, again, credit to Castleford, they were a far the better side today and deserved the victory.
Q: No Harry Robertson today, is he injured.
PR: He got a bit of a slight quad tear in training, so it's a day's not weeks return, and he'll be fully raring to go, but the consequences of him playing and doing more damage would have been months. So it's just a precaution.
Q: Not the performance you want to go into a break with, but what do you do between now and the next game?
PR: Obviously we'd have rather played this week and had another game, but that's the emotion. I think the reality is pretty much the same cluster of players have got us to this part of the season and they're ready for a break and they deserve a break.
So take the emotion out of it most of the players have been back-to-back and long minutes for a long time. It's a short break and then we're back in, but we probably would have rather got back on the horse straight away.
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