Cunningham pleased that tough Saints made Wolves crack first

St Helens coach Keiron Cunningham was delighted with the way that his players defended in their Magic Weekend win over Warrington on Sunday.

The Saints triumphed 20-16, and Cunningham felt that his players really won the game in the arm wrestle, where they forced the Wolves to crack first.

“They were great defensively,” he said.

“I thought across the board, from middles to edges, we defended as a real good unit.

“It’s something we work on really hard, and we’ve probably put more emphasis on that over the last previous weeks, since the Catalans game.

“The boys are looking really good. They take everything on board, they’re a great group to work with, and that makes life easy.

“You put some information to them and they just take it on board and do it really good.

“We stayed in there, and the most pleasing thing for me is we stayed in the arm wrestle, we hung in there and we just ground out a victory.

“There was nothing too flash.

“Warrington were good on the day, they defended well too.

“When it came to the arm wrestle they seemed to be the first team to crack.

“That was pleasing for me, because we’ve not been hanging in there that much before the Hull game.”

Cunningham is encouraged by the spirit his team has shown in the last couple of fixtures.

“The last two weeks we’ve got out there and got our points, and then we’ve defended the lead until the end of the game,” he added.

“That’s good resilience from a team, it gives them good belief in each another.”