Saracens defeat 'particularly gutting' for Saints boss Dowson

Ben Earl led a stunning Saracens fightback as they scored four tries in the final 17 minutes to grab the victory.

It was a ninth win in as many Gallagher Premiership matches for Mark McCall's side, who had been hit by several injuries during the game.

But for Saints it was one that most definitely got away as they only took two points from a game they should have grabbed the full five from.

"It's very hard to sum it up in a sentence without using expletives," said Saints boss Dowson.

"We've talked about it before when we've been in situations like that but it's particularly gutting when we've been very good for a lot of it and then very poor for the remainder.

"That is as disappointed as I've been in coaching."

Saints were hampered by two second-half yellow cards, with Lukhan Salakaia-Loto and Tom James sin-binned for high tackles.

And Dowson said: "We have to do better in general.

"The way the game's refereed in general there's lots more yellow cards but there's lots of sides who get yellow cards and don't concede as much as we are. It's something we need to look at as a coaching group.

"To lose all the momentum in the game and not manage the game in those situations is costing us wins. My job is to provide wins.

"The discipline is not very good and then we're going off page when we're under pressure."

The game went to uncontested scrums early on as Saracens suffered two loosehead injuries.

And Dowson said: "It had a huge impact.

"We had the upper hand in that area early on and it does change the game because it becomes very hard to defend from scrums.

"We didn't look after the ball in the second half and they had lots of scrums and opportunities to attack us so it does become very hard to defend from that point."

Fraser Dingwall scored a hat-trick on the day for Saints, but Dowson was in no mood to discuss individual displays.

"All those great individual performances need to come together to create a team performance, and they didn't do that today," he said.

"We'll go through it and obviously those guys will get feedback in terms of what they're doing well and what they're doing poorly.

"But as a group, that's the most important thing, and we weren't good enough today."