ROYCE Simmons once again bemoaned “individual errors” as Saints went down 12-8 at Bradford – despite great tries from Andrew Dixon (pictured) and Francis Meli.
He admitted to feeling “frustrated and disappointed” after seeing a lot of effort from his charges.
“I saw a lot of good effort out there,” he said. “Defensively we were very strong. They scored from two kicks, which they are very good at but they didn’t carry the ball over the line.
“Even when we had a player in the sinbin I thought we defended very strongly in that period. There aren’t many sides that can hold out for 10 minutes when you’re in that situation.
“But attacking wise we didn’t stay composed. We tended to make errors you don’t expect – particularly individual errors that were pretty crucial to the end result.
“You put a lot of pressure on yourselves when you don’t find touch from a penalty kick. Then when you get a scrum and feed and then you get penalised, that’s a silly penalty isn’t it? It was another penalty we gave away when we had the ball. Then we don’t catch a ball on the full which everyone knows is the first thing you have to do. And, we turned the ball over on the first tackle and there’s 20 minutes go and we were getting into the game.
“As a team we are trying hard, but individual errors are costing us and taking the game away from us. When you come up with an error like that, and they happen back to back, and then someone says why aren’t you attacking more… that’s because you are fatigued, under repeat sets and you’re turning around all the time.
“Then when you have the ball you are fatigued and stick it under your arm and run. We have to learn that if someone makes an error we can’t let it affect us.”
He continued: “A lot of attention will be on Jamie Foster. He is one of our younger boys who hit the scene last year and they tasted a pretty consistent run apart from a poor start.
“This is the first time they have gone through this and it is a real learning curve. A few of them need to learn to deal with things when they go wrong and then throw them away.”
Simmons said that James Roby and Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook have good chances of returning when Saints face Leeds on Sunday, whilst he rated Ade Gardner’s hopes of coming back into the side as “pretty good”.
Saints will leave it as late as possible to decide on the fitness of Sia Soliola and Jonny Lomax.
