Making a return to St Helens since switching clubs to Catalans, it was a stellar showing by stand-off Leon Pryce, a sentiment echoed by Dragons coach Laurent Frayssinous, who was full of praise for the half.
With a crucial win at Langtree Park now under the belt, Frayssinous was pleased with the way Pryce played and how he linked up with half Thomas Bosc.
“Everybody knows what Leon can do,” he said. “He provides the x-factor but what he has done for the club since Scott Dureau has been ill has been magnificent.
“He said last December, ‘I won’t let you down’ and hasn’t. He’s a great guy. He controls the team.”
The match very nearly went the other way, as Saints tried to fight their way back into the contest after Mickael Simon was sin-binned for a professional foul, but Frayssinous was pleased with how his side held on.
“The fightback from St Helens was terrific but we did enough with our defence at the end,” he added.
“It was a tough game but our forwards played well. That’s our strength at the moment. We spent a week here to try and come up with a good performance and we did that.
“The first half was a good arm wrestle which we won but we were a bit anxious in the second half, a bit scratchy.
“I’m really happy for the work the boys did, especially with 12 men. They wanted to do it for Mickael.
“St Helens had a lot of quality players injured and I thought the quality of our bench was the difference.”
With a plethora of experience missing the game due to injury, St Helens coach Nathan Brown praised the efforts of his young players who dug deep despite the loss.
“I can’t fault the guys’ efforts and commitment,” he said.
“Alex Walmsley was great and is getting better, Mark Percival and Adam Swift are getting better.
“The game time the youngsters are getting is invaluable for them and their rewards will come. Obviously we’d like them to come this year, but sometimes it takes a bit of time.
“We should get a lot of confidence out of tonight. We withstood a lot of pressure.
“If we can tidy up a couple of areas and try to gain a little momentum in attack, we will be quite confident we should do okay.
“We’re trying hard, we just need to get a bit smarter.”