Mallinder tells Saints to ‘sharpen up’ for Sale clash

Jim Mallinder has urged Saints to ‘sharpen up’ ahead of their tricky trip to Sale on Saturday.
URGING IMPROVEMENT - Jim Mallinder (picture: Kirsty Edmonds)URGING IMPROVEMENT - Jim Mallinder (picture: Kirsty Edmonds)
URGING IMPROVEMENT - Jim Mallinder (picture: Kirsty Edmonds)

Mallinder’s men have won their past seven games, but the director of rugby has not been happy with his side’s defending in the victories over Harlequins and Newcastle.

Saints have shipped seven tries in their past two matches, but seen their ruthless attacking game get them out of jail.

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And Mallinder is eager to see defensive improvement from his team when they travel to the AJ Bell Stadium, where they were beaten in the Aviva Premiership last March.

“In attack there were moments of brilliance last week,” he said. “We scored some good tries and, arguably, we could have got two or three more.

“There were some really good aspects to our attacking play, but we’re very disappointed in some of our defence.

“We’ve conceded more tries in the past couple of weeks than we’ve done all season and it’s something we need to sharpen up a little bit.

“A lot of it is mental and we need to make sure we don’t concede from first phase and we certainly need to defend mauls better than what we did last Friday.”

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