Mallinder pleased with ‘professional’ Saints showing

Doubles from Lee Dickson and Luther Burrell along with a try apiece from Ahsee Tuala and Jamie Elliott got the job done at Franklin’s Gardens.

The bonus-point success means Saints can’t be caught at the top of the Aviva Premiership table, with Bath six points back going into the final weekend.

And Mallinder was happy with the way his men handled the challenge of facing a London Welsh side who have now lost all 31 of their games in all competitions this season.

“It was quite professional,” said the director of rugby.

“Sometimes games like that can be quite frustrating because you want to score every time you get the ball, but you know that’s not going to happen.

“London Welsh played well. They defended very well, particularly in the first half, and stopped us scoring too many points.

“But we were confident in the second half, playing down the slope with a bit of a breeze, that the gap would appear and so it happened.”

Saints conclude the regular season at Leicester Tigers next Saturday, ahead of the Premiership play-off semi-final at Franklin’s Gardens on May 23.

And Mallinder feels the win against London Welsh was productive, with his side emerging with a clean bill of health.

“Teams do take quite a lot of breaking down and London Welsh have stiffened up their defence a bit, as we saw at Leicester a couple of weeks ago,” he said.

“You’ve just got to be patient, keep the ball in hand and maybe we did force it a bit at times, but we did what we had to do.

“We got a good win, used all 23 players and got some good game time.

“We didn’t get any serious injuries, which is encouraging.”