Northampton must find consistency, warns Coles

Alex Coles captained Northampton Saints against Saracens with George Furbank unavailable because of a fractured arm

Northampton lock Alex Coles said the Saints must find some "week in, week out consistency" to have a chance of reaching the end of season play-offs.

Defeat at Saracens on Sunday was the reigning champions' fifth in eight Premiership games this season and left them 10 points adrift of Leicester Tigers in fourth place.

Nine days on from beating Bulls in South Africa in the European Champions Cup, Saints found themselves 24-0 down at half-time and eventually lost 39-24.

"The table doesn't lie, does it?" captain-for-the day Coles told BBC Radio Northampton.

Northampton won 12 of their 18 games to finish top of the table last season and went on to beat Bath at Twickenham to claim their first title for a decade.

But to match that number of victories, they would need to win nine of their 10 remaining league matches in the current campaign.

They do, however, have home advantage for the next two, against Newcastle Falcons, the team immediately below them in the table, on 28 December and current leaders Bath on 5 January.

"I'm certain we'll get a response against Newcastle, I'm sure of it. The thing is then, can we bring it every week, when it's not a one-off game in Europe?" Coles added.

"It's easy to get up for those one-off games but when it's week in, week out, attritional, in the Premiership, can we deliver every week? That's the challenge."

Saracens scored four of their six tries in the first half as Northampton failed to get to grips with the game at the StoneX Stadium until it was too late.

"We didn't win enough battles out there on the pitch, either as individuals or as a team. We didn't look after the ball when we had it, when they had it they won it back too easily off kicks and breakdowns," Coles said.

"We were just camped in our own half the whole time and Sarries are a good team, they'll punish you if you give them too much field position.

"It's horrible. To go away against the Bulls and produce that performance, and then produce that 40 minutes [against Saracens] is so frustrating.

"We know how good we can be and we're just searching for what's going to make us consistent every week."

He added: "The points difference was just too much. Even if we go in at the break and we're seven points down, we're in with a shout, but we just gave them way too much in the first half."

It was a similar scenario to last month's home game against Gloucester, when Saints lost 25-17 after trailing 22-7 at the interval.

"I wouldn't be frustrated if we weren't any good," said Saints director of rugby Phil Dowson.

"If we couldn't play, we'd work hard in training and rebuild our game. We can play, we can do it right and we can get stuck in, but we didn't.

"We'll be in on Tuesday morning, Wednesday off, and then we'll be in [for training] on Thursday afternoon - Christmas actually gets in the way."