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Saints full of desire but must improve accuracy, warns Ludlam

Captain Lewis Ludlam insists Northampton Saints cannot afford to rely on producing miraculous comebacks to pick up results, following an astonishing 40-36 victory at Wasps on Sunday. 

When Will Haydon-Wood kicked a penalty to put Wasps 36-28 ahead with three minutes to go at the Coventry Building Society Arena, Saints looked set for a fourth defeat in five games of this season’s Gallagher Premiership. 

It had been a disjointed performance from the men in Black, Green & Gold, but after a penalty try and red card to Wasps fullback Jacob Umaga for a dangerous mid-air tackle on Courtnall Skosan, Northampton were back in the contest.

And Saints found their best rugby in the nick of time as Alex Coles’ second try of the afternoon gave them hope with the clock ticking past 78 minutes. 

Skosan, who passed a HIA after landing horribly off Umaga’s challenge, then snatched an improbable win by running in at the corner from Tommy Freeman’s inch-perfect pass from the final play. 

Ludlam said: “We did really well to step up. However, we want to work on closing out those games a bit earlier, so we don’t have to rely on desire and grit and wanting to grind out games.

“We want to be putting games to bed and I don’t think we did that well enough for the first 70 minutes.”

Lewis Ludlam

“There’s obviously a massive amount to work on in this team. But one of the things you can’t coach is desire and we had that in abundance, especially in the last two minutes to be able to fight our way into that game. 

“So, that’s a big thumbs up, but we know there are loads of things we need to work on if we’re going to be genuine contenders in the Premiership.”

One of the areas where Saints struggled in Coventry was as the breakdown, where Wasps openside Jack Willis was a menace in forcing the visitors to concede a succession of penalties. 

Ludlam remarked: “It was almost a perfect storm – Jack Willis is obviously fantastic over the ball, they’ve got a few lads who are really good at the breakdown. 

“They’ve got really good breakdown threats and we want to play a wide, expansive game so that makes it hard for us to clear breakdowns quickly. 

“They were fantastic at the breakdown, we didn’t adapt well enough, and we should have probably tightened our game up a little bit.

“However, hats off to the lads to be able to grind out and win it at the end. We need to take the lessons from that into next week, because that breakdown work is what the likes of [George] McGuigan and [Jamie] Blamire are good at.”

Lewis Ludlam

The match was reminiscent of last season’s 36-31 win at Bath, in which Saints also pulled an unlikely victory out of the fire after being nowhere near their best for the majority of the contest. 

Following that, they went on a run that qualified them for the Gallagher Premiership semi-finals and Ludlam is hoping this result against Wasps can hold a similar significance after being on the wrong end of some tight finishes in recent weeks. 

He added: “Generally, apart from today, we’ve been playing some good rugby. 

“Today was one of our not-so-good performances and we’ve managed to get a win, so it’s very important that this team builds a bit of momentum. 

“After the boys got the win on Wednesday night against Saracens, I think it was pivotal that the boys kept that going and we did, just about. Momentum builds quickly in rugby so we’re looking forward to two more important matches this week.”

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