NATHAN Brown says the weekend off has given his squad the chance to freshen up and reflect on recent events at Langtree Park.
Speaking ahead of the Leeds clash on Monday, Saints’ Head Coach said the break has brought a number of players back into the reckoning and that can only be beneficial.
“The players have come back energetic,” he said. “We have been able to train together and do things as a squad. We haven’t been able to do that for a long time and now we can as we have people healthy enough to do things.
“We don’t want to be out of the cup but you have to try and take the positives. To freshen players up who have played a lot of footy and get players back is a good thing and now we can look at the second half of the season.
“The bonus for us is the players that have come back have added a lot of size to the pack and experience. The younger lads will now be fielded with experience around them – which will help – and a fair majority of the squad can now play in their position or at least the positions and side of the field they can naturally play.
“We have had more than our fair share of bad luck. We’ve used 32 players and had ten debutants too. There are things the coaching staff could have controlled better and others that the playing group could have controlled better too.
“Now we have to say it is a new start. Experience is returning and there are still around six or seven blokes in rehab. They will come out over the next couple of weeks and then we will have a good healthy squad to look at and give ourselves a good chance of playing some consistent footy at the back end of the year.”
Saints face a tough run of matches over the next few weeks with Leeds, Warrington and Huddersfield next up for Brown’s boys.
“Warrington are back to what we expect of them and Huddersfield are going well too,” he added. “We need to play reasonably well, get some flow in our game and keep people in spots for a number of weeks.
“Leeds have shown that carrying good form is better than being higher on the ladder. Having a healthy squad at the right time is better than being higher and having a couple of key players out. They have been playing well too, they play good footy and it will be a good challenge to go there.
“But we need to look at the things we can manage better regardless of our personnel and positions. In a couple of the games we’ve lost there are things we could have done better. Widnes was the most disappointing loss. We did enough against Hull KR with 12 men but didn’t handle certain situations as well as we should have.
“It’s fair to say if we were all 100 per cent fit, Alex Walmsley and Mark Percival would be in the team on merit as was Anthony Walker before he got injured. That is the upshot to having those younger players playing. You’d have to pick Luke Thompson too.
“In a few weeks we will have players back and they will have players under them adding pressure. If they aren’t doing the small parts of the game well they won’t get in the squad. We wouldn’t be in that position if we hadn’t gone through the last month or so.
“We aren’t in a good spot on ladder, but the future of the club is good and once we bring in what we need to then it will be good.”
