Defence is key for Mose Masoe and St Helens

St Helens forward Mose Masoe wants his team to be as known for their defensive strength as for their attack.

Saints kept Catalans Dragons pointless in the second half of their opening day win over the French outfit, and Masoe believes that they have set a marker for the rest of the season.

“We’ve been working quite hard on our defence,” he said.

“Every other team knows we’re quite a good attacking team, but we want to be known for our defence this year.

“We want clubs to know that when they come to St Helens it’s going to be a tough day for them.”

Masoe was pleased with the win over the Dragons, in a game which was disrupted early on by an injury to Willie Tonga, which caused a long delay in proceedings.

“It was quite a tough game against Catalans,” Masoe added.

“They came out strongly and offloaded the ball, and it was hard for us to contain them.

“To get the two points against such a skilful side was good for us.

“There were a couple of incidents, and it was kind of like an NFL game when it first started. The first half took a good 60 minutes, it was quite a long game.

“But once we got into it, the boys found the rhythm okay, we got some back-to-back sets ono our line in defence, and we found that quite hard, but to ‘D’ up with 12 men was quite impressive for the boys.

“It’s going to be a tough compeition this year. So you have to win every game, every game counts now.

“For us to get the win and keep them scoreless in the second half was good.”

Next up for Saints is a trip to Salford Red Devils on Thursday evening. Masoe is relishing the chance to tangle with Super League‘s big spenders.

“It’s going to be tough for us, but I guess if we can get in the arm wrestle again like with Catalans, then it’ll put us in a good position to win the game,” he said.

“It’s going to be a big game, they’ve got some strike power throughout the whole field.

“It’s going to be a good battle.”