After the tough fixture at Franklin’s Gardens yesterday, where Wasps maintained their unbeaten record despite the home side playing the better rugby throughout, Jim Mallinder is hoping that after two strong performances Saints can turn their attack into a win against Exeter next week.
“You’ve got to focus on the positives.” Mallinder told SaintsTV.
“That’s the way the game goes sometimes; you can be the better side and lose a game and I think today we were. We played some great rugby, right from this first whistle, scored a cracking try and created so many opportunities.
“But you’ve got to take those opportunities, its as simple as that and Wasps did. They had two chances, one from their own 22 and one from our mistake and they turned it over and scored two tries under the posts. We worked very, very hard and just to come away with one point is very disappointing.”
Mallinder’s thoughts are already turned to Exeter and he hopes that the attacking show Saints have given over the last couple of games can be transformed into a win on home soil next Friday.
“It’s early on in the season and we’d have loved to have been on four wins like Wasps are but unfortunately that’s not the case. So we can’t feel sorry for ourselves, we’ve just got to dust ourselves down and come back in Monday.
“We’ve got to make sure that when we come back out here we give the fans something to cheer about next week against Exeter. I thought they were fantastic today, I thought they really did lift the team and got behind the team and hopefully they can do that on Friday.
“Exeter are a quality side; they wouldn’t have got to Premiership Finals if they weren’t. So it’ll be another tough test for us. We’ve played two tough teams and now we’re playing them.
“The Premiership is a very, very high standard, we’ve seen that it’s very, very tight with fine lines and hopefully we’ll get on the right side of that fine line with a few things going our way and get a good win.”
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