St Helens interim coach Eamon O’Carroll told Sky Sports:
“I would have loved us to perform a bit better for longer periods and I thought Hull KR’s young players were fantastic – they competed really hard.
“But you know, if you’d said to me this morning that we’d win the game, that we would send Jonny and Mark out the way we have and win at home, I would have snatched your hand off.
“When I first came into this job, I wanted to make sure I left it in a better place. That means I’ll continue into next week. I’ll do the player reviews and try and help set things up for next season and then I’ll go down to Scarlets at the back end of next week.”
Hull KR assistant coach Dave Hodgson told BBC Radio Humberside:
“I thought it was outstanding straight from the off. They just got after them, didn’t they? It was great to see and that’s all we ask for, mainly around the effort areas and see where the game goes.
“They went even longer than we thought they might do and Saints, we rattled them.
“It was a bit of indiscipline in the first half – it probably hurt us a little bit as a younger team and we allowed Saints to hurt us a little bit.
“But there was a lot of good stuff, playing against a very good Saints team, who had a lot to play for on the night with Lomax and Percival retiring. I thought our young team really got into them.”
St Helens: Welsby; Sailor, Percival (c), Cross, Douglas; Robertson, Lomax; Suluka-Fifita, Humphreys, Klemmer, Sironen, Keely, Shorrocks.
Interchanges: Host, Evans, Matagi, Cartwright; Knox.
Hull KR: Holden; Harvey Horne, L Gorman, Booth, Kershaw; Lewis (c), Charles; Fishwick, Leyland, Wainhouse, Dearlove, Westerman, Woods.
Interchanges: Murphy, A Gorman, Middlemas, Petty; Harrison Horne.
Referee: Matty Lynn.
