'We were second best' - Ferguson reflects on Saints' semi-final defeat at London Irish

Saints struggled in the set piece as Irish won out, making sure of their place in the final thanks to a late Eddie Poolman try.

And Ferguson said: "We were second best, couldn’t get a foothold in the game and that was the reason why we lost it.

"There was a willingness to keep trying to bang, which is what we asked of them, but at the moment there aren’t many (positives) to think of.

"We’ve used this competition to get game time into boys returning from injuries and there were a few boys out there who played a bit longer than they would have thought so that was great to get those boys back on the park in a really competitive game of rugby. We just couldn’t bring our part in it.

"When we came here to Irish in September, we had two 17-year-olds (Archie McParland and Henry Pollock) who are both playing for the Under-18s this weekend so it was great for them to get that exposure at this level in this competition.

"There have been a lot of guys who don’t regularly get to put a Saints shirt on and we stayed true to them tonight as we have through the whole competition.”