Woolf bemoans injuries and takes aim at controversial decision

St Helens head coach Kristian Woolf was full of praise for his side, especially having done it tough with two substitutes down following knocks to Tommy Makinson and Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook.

“I’m really proud of the second-half effort, we lost a winger in the first carry of the game and it looks like the same injury for Tommy.

“It’s no question whether we brought him back too early but he’s been training fine for more than a week, we could have pushed him to play last week.

“We did have Jack (Welsby) on the bench, but we had a a different plan for Jack and it rattled us.

“We lost Louie as well so it meant that some blokes had to carry some more responsibility, but I thought that in the second-half we were really tough.

“He was fine at half-time, but I can’t understand a bloke being put on report yet there’s no penalty, it’s a strange one.

“He recovered really well, but he stumbled after the play the ball so he was quite clearly concussed.”

With those two injuries, it also meant that veteran James Roby had to shift to number 13.

“Roby shifted to loose forward and we had to adjust things on the run, and we thought it was best.

“Robes was outstanding tonight, he played 80 minutes and 20 at loose forward and I can’t fault him at all.”

Woolf also spoke highly of Huddersfield and how Saints had come a long way since last year’s semi-finals.

“Huddersfield defended really well and made it difficult; it was a slow game at the ruck which makes it really hard to score and we put our tries together really well.

“We had a plan we were going into the game with and rotation was key for us, but we had blokes that were out there for a lot of minutes who had a lot of fatigue.

“We couldn’t hand the ball over in poor position and I thought we did a really good job of managing the game.

“We remember last year in the quarter-finals, we lost two players in that game and didn’t deal with that well and couldn’t overcome it that day, but we got the result tonight and live to fight another day.”