Northampton Saints: Mallinder left to rue error-ridden first-half from Saints
Pictures by Linda Dawson
JIM MALLINDER says his Saints side gave themselves too much to do after going down to defeat at Kingsholm.
Too many mistakes saw Saints 18-9 down at half-time and though they came back strongly in the second half with tries from Soane Tonga’uiha and George Pisi, a late Freddie Burns penalty saw Gloucester come out on top 27-24.
It was a frustrating performance for Mallinder as his side started a run of four crucial Premiership games during the Six Nations without their England stars.
They remain in the top four, but the chasing pack have closed in with Exeter in fifth just two points behind third-placed Saints and eighth-placed Gloucester only four points back.
And Mallinder knows a point at Kingsholm will only look useful if they beat Sale at home on Saturday.
“We were disappointed we couldn’t go through and win that game in the second half, but we gave ourselves too much to do,” said Mallinder.
“When you come to a place like this you need to start well and in a way shut the crowd up and you do that by doing your basics well and taking the points when they are on offer.”
Unfortunately Saints didn’t do their basics well in the first half and Gloucester took advantage with tries from Charlie Sharples and hooker Darren Dawidiuk.
Mallinder added: “We had a poor first half, we were inaccurate in terms of getting out of our own half, some of our defensive work was poor and we gave away too many penalties at the breakdown.”
Saints racked up 14 penalties and they found Burns in excellent kicking form as he landed a couple from nearly 50m in amassing 17 points.
Ryan Lamb returned to the Saints line up after two weeks with England Saxons but he didn’t enjoy the greatest of games and missed two simple looking penalties.
But Mallinder refused to lump all the blame at the former Gloucester fly-half’s door.
Mallinder said: “You can look at a number of things, at the ‘ifs and buts’, if we had not conceded so many penalties then we would have won the game as well. They kicked well.
“Stephen Myler is a good player and Ryan is a good player. We were just beginning to get our attacking game going in the second half and Ryan is good at that, but when Stephen came on he also kept that going and kept the pressure on.”
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tony conran
Monday, February 13, 2012 at 02:36 PMMight help if he got the team selection right. No disrespect to Lamby but he had a nightmare last week for the Saxons. He seems more of a player in need of confidence than Steve Myler. It's always open to debate but I think both Myler and May should have started yesterday and yes I did think that before the game.
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