\n However, coach Paul Rowley explained that this was an enforced decision due to injury and not a selection choice,\n<\/p>\n
\n Saints brought back Mark Percival back after a long lay-off with Deon Cross the other centre.\n<\/p>\n
\n Rowley explained: “Harry got a bit of a slight quad tear in training, so it’s ‘a days’ not ‘weeks’ return, and he’ll be fully raring to go.\n<\/p>\n
\n “But the consequences of him playing and doing more damage would have been months. So it’s just a precaution.”\n<\/p>\n
\n Aside from missing Robertson, Saints were in the wars with Noah Stephens taking a heavy knock and going off for a HIA on his first game back after failing one in the Challenge Cup semi-final.\n<\/p>\n
\n They also had Jack Welsby (off the ball) and Jackson Hastings (throw) yellow carded which will lead to a nervous weekend awaiting the Match Review Panel’s decision.\n<\/p>\n
\n Saints have a blank weekend with it being the Challenge Cup Final and the players will still get a short break, as scheduled.\n<\/p>\n
\n But the timing is not ideal off the back of a pretty poor performance.\n<\/p>\n
\n Rowley said: “Obviously we’d have rather played this week and had another game, but that’s the emotion.\n<\/p>\n
\n “I think the reality is pretty much the same cluster of players have got us to this part of the season and they’re ready for a break and they deserve a break.\n<\/p>\n
\n “So take the emotion out of it most of the players have been back-to-back and long minutes for a long time. It’s a short break and then we’re back in, but we probably would have rather got back on the horse straight away.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"However, coach Paul Rowley explained that this was an enforced decision due to injury and not a selection…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-601341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}