Coles feels Saints players can learn from how Pollock handled Bordeaux battle

Pollock was booed before and during the game, but he refused to let it bother him as he notched two tries, the first of which was a special chip and chase.

The 20-year-old celebrated that score by booting the ball into the crowd, sparking a melee on the field of play, but he kept his head for the remainder of the game and kept going until the end, helping Saints to claim a try bonus point from a tough Investec Champions Cup clash.

Coles feels the difficult experience will stand him and his team-mates in good stead, and he has hailed Pollock for the way he dealt with such a pressurised situation in the spotlight.

"Some of it's just how many times you do it, how many times you've been in the cauldron as such,” Coles said.

“That's when you really learn about yourself and the reason some of the away victories we've had have been so special, because they've been so hard-fought and so rare.

“It's not like because we've had them in the past you just turn up and expect to take teams away in their house the whole time.

“We'll take a lot from this as a group. We've had some new people come into the team who have impacted us so much throughout the year, but maybe they won't have experienced some of these European away games in that level of hostility.

"It's difficult but you can also use that to feed you in a really positive way, and you saw that in Pollock's performance because I thought he really thrived today.

"Like Dows (Saints boss Phil Dowson) said, personally and as a team, we're really proud of the way he went about his work.

"He dropped that restart and just went straight back and went at it again.

"As players we can learn from the example of such a young kid just standing up to that hostility and backing himself. At points today, we could have used a bit more of that across the field, myself included - just taking the game to them a bit more."

Saints were beaten 50-28 by a Union Bordeaux Bègles team possessing huge amounts of power and pace, but they did show their fight to score three second-half tries to add to Pollock's eye-catching opener.

"We want to impose our game on them and they want to impose their game on us," Coles said. "Good teams are going to do good things.

"We're a good team, they're a good team, but they did more good stuff than we did today and we've just got to try to be more consistent at winning those little battles.

"For instance, at scrum and lineout, they put a lot of pressure on and they've got a lot of good operators in that area, which makes it hard for the rest of our game to flow.

"We want to play fast and we didn't quite get that.

"We want to counter in the kick battles, they want to do that as well, but we probably weren't at it at that part of the game and they took us apart with some of their dangerous back-three play.

"There's going to be so much we can review from that game.

"Ultimately, to come away with a try bonus point is a bit mixed because we're gutted with the result but maybe it gives us a chance in the overall standings."

Coles was asked after the game in Bordeaux about what personal improvements he's looking to make.

And he said: “It's about can I be more impactful on a game like today?

“I was personally a bit disappointed I couldn't add as much for the team as someone like Henry (Pollock) did on a day like today.

“It's about how consistently I can show up against a team like this with a great pack.

“It's about how physical can I be, how consistently can I help the team, more and more just trying to drive the technical bits as well as the emotional level going into games.

“Everyone's got a different way to do it so everyone can't be Henry.

“I can't be Henry and I certainly wouldn't want to try to copy the way he goes about it because I've got my own process and for the most part it's been fairly successful over the past couple of seasons.

“But just from a holistic point of view in terms of how confident he is to just go and put his game on the pitch, it's about how you can use that in your own way because it's certainly something to be used as an example.”