Dowson 'disappointed and frustrated' as Saints suffer semi-final defeat at Saracens

The black, green and gold were beaten 38-15 by table-toppers Saracens at StoneX Stadium on Saturday afternoon.

Saracens had moved into a 21-3 lead by half-time as Sean Maitland, who was fortunate to escape a card for taking George Furbank out in the air early on, scored twice and Ivan van Zyl also dotted down.

Saints fought back after half-time, cutting the gap to nine points thanks to fine tries from Alex Mitchell and James Ramm.

But Saracens earned a penalty try and sent Max Malins over to seal their place in the showpiece.

And Dowson, who steered Saints to a fourth-placed finish in his first season in charge, said: "We're clearly disappointed and frustrated.

"In the first half, we didn't get our game on the pitch - their defence didn't allow us to.

"In the second half, we saw a bit more of our game but, again, we were fighting an uphill battle with that scoreline.

"At half-time, we wanted a simplification and to go back to our game, to be brave enough to pull the trigger on a couple of things.

"We’d found ourselves running with the ball and getting eaten up by two-man tackles.

"The ball looked slow and we couldn't get it going forward.

"Rugby's still a game of momentum and we weren't physical enough. We didn't move the ball either."

Dowson refused to criticise the officials for the decision to keep Maitland on the field during the formative stages of the match.

He said: "Nothing was given and I presume, having not heard the ref mic, that the TMO had looked at it and (referee) Karl (Dickson) had seen it so we need to be better at not conceding tries, which has been an issue throughout the season."