Saints will bounce back

By Paul Sculthorpe St Helens and Lions star

St Helens' recent form is frustrating to say the least at the moment - it's like taking two steps forward and one step back.

Or more like one step forward and two steps back.

Training this week has been tough - but that's the way it has to be. Another disappointing defeat, this time to Wakefield, means we have now lost five of our last seven games.

We have got to stop the rot as quickly as possible - we cannot afford to keep losing games.

We know what we have to do, and it is up to the players to get things right.

There are a lot of things we can improve on in defence, but it is our attacking play that is letting us down.

Our completion rate against Wakefield was only about 32%. You would not beat an amateur side playing like that.

Martyn has broken his arm twice in the last year

We allowed them far too much possession. You won't beat a team if you haven't got control of the ball.

I don't mean to take any credit away from Wakefield though. I said last week that there league position did not reflect how well they had been playing.

The warning signs were there - they had already gone close to claiming the scalps of Wigan, Bradford and Leeds.

But we were aware of that and we certainly did not approach the game thinking it would be a walk-over.

Complacency is not the problem, it is a lack of concentration that has dogged us all season.

Were there any positives to come out of the game? No I don't think there were.

Fortunately Tim Jonkers, who was stretchered from the field after being hurt in the tackle, has been training this week and he looks like he is going to be okay.

Martyn facing six-week lay-off

But we learned on Monday that Tommy Martyn is out for six weeks with a recurrence of his arm injury.

You never want to lose a player, but it's an even bigger blow when you're playing badly.

But we have a strong enough squad to cope with this kind of thing and everybody has to stand up now, starting with London on Friday.

If we keep losing games we are going to find ourselves too far out of the race.