PAUL WELLENS said St Helens need to improve their discipline despite a morale-boosting 40-4 victory over Castleford Tigers.
A Jon Bennison hat-trick helped Saints to all but secure their place in the play-offs.
This was a revitalised Saints, with several key players returning to the line-up, which helped ease some of the pressure on their coach Wellens.
Against a Castleford side that had won just once in their last seven, they played some eye-catching rugby.
This was not an entirely vintage performance, however. They gave away five first-half penalties which Wellens was keen to point out will be a key area of focus.
“In play-off games, these things are going to hurt you,” he said.
“We came up with back-to-back penalties, I put Agnatius Paasi and James Bell on with ten minutes to go in the first half and all they did was defend.
“We can’t keep doing that to ourselves moving forward. I was pleased they rectified our issues, but the challenge is to go and fix them.”
Castleford coach Craig Lingard bemoaned his side’s basic errors after the defeat.
“We knew it was going to be tough,” he said. “We had a lot of bodies out and a lot of young kids in there and we didn’t start the game too well.
“I was pleased with how we dug in, but I thought our execution and some of our basic skills were off.
“We didn’t make Saints work for it. We aren’t executing that simple skill and, as a result, are putting ourselves under pressure.
“We started poorly straight after half-time, which has been a feature for us all season.”
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