Planet Rugby

Mallinder blames Saints inconsistency

19th January 2013 20:42

Jim Mallinder Dragons

Frustrated: Jim Mallinder

Northampton boss Jim Mallinder stated that his side did not deserve a place in the Heineken Cup quarter-finals after losing to Glasgow.

Defeat in Scotland ended the 2011 finalists' hopes for this campaign, with Mallinder highlighting his side's inconsistency as the key factor.

"We showed that when we want to we can get performances; the win at Ulster away - the only visiting team to win at Ravenhill this season - was magnificent for us," said Mallinder.

"But to win these competitions you need to be more consistent. We won three games and lost three games and that isn't good enough.

"We came up here to try and get to the quarter-finals of the Heineken Cup. We knew it was an outside chance, we needed four tries. We were close, but we weren't close enough.

"We'll take positives in terms of possession and attacking play," he said. "We said at half-time that we were in the game. We only had one try but we had the wind in our favour and the slope in our favour."

Warriors coach Gregor Townsend said the victory is a morale-boost after some near-misses this season.

"We went down to Northampton - who were Premiership leaders at the time - and we were 15-0 up. We were leading for 75 minutes over at Castres, so we've shown it, we just haven't had the 80 minutes and the winning performance until now," said Townsend.

Comments

melkdave says...

Its no use blaming inconsistentlency,The simple fact is Saints have a lack of class overall in the squad,They can field a fantastic 1st XV ,but after that ,the lack of quality in depth shows like a beconfire..Time i think for the management to look at the England U18s and 19s,20s ect ,and start offering contracts to some of these exciting youngsters comming though,and at such players in Ireland and elsewhere.,looking to really flourish in 2-3 yrs time

Posted 15:21 20th January 2013

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