‘The better team lost’ – Woolf on Salford defeat

Kristian Woolf was proud of his young Saints team that went down 12-10 to Salford.

The result ended a 10-match winning run for the reigning champions, who still gave the more experienced Red Devils a scare despite making several changes.

Speaking on his team’s late defeat, Woolf said: “They did not tire. I did not think that was a factor at all. I thought that in terms of the energy battle, we won that for 80 minutes and I thought we were the better team for 80 minutes.

“It does not show that on the scoreboard. We just put ourselves under too much pressure and then allowed them to build pressure and to their credit, they found some experienced players to score the points when they really needed them.

“I do not think that came down to not being fit enough. They were more than fit enough for the challenge.”

Elaborating on the match, Woolf believes his team missed a number of chances to put the game to bed and in the end it was a self-inflicted defeat.

He added: “Every play counts at this level and a number of young blokes will learn that.

“There was a number of situations where we get our fifth play right in that last seven, eight or nine minutes where we could have made it really tough for Salford.

“We score a try there we should have scored and I think that would have broken them.

“We do not make an error coming off our own line and we roll down the other end of the field to put them in a bad position again and in that set, we could have broken them.

“There’s a number of little things like that just started to add up and instead of us being able to put pressure on the opposition when we were on top, they mounted the pressure on us and that is what our blokes will learn.”