Following Friday night’s humbling at the hands of Ulster, Saints full-back Ben Foden took to social networking site Twitter to make an apology.
Foden said: “I had a terrible game personally tonight, very disappointing. No excuses a lot to work on for next week. #gutted #embarrassed”.
The England star’s pain had been compounded by the fact he had seen opposite number Jared Payne score a try and claim the man-of-the-match Champagne.
All in all, it was a strange evening.
Not only had Foden been outclassed by a visiting full-back - something that is as uncommon as an Ulster defeat - but Saints had been systematically dismantled on their own turf.
It clearly hurt everyone associated with the green, black and gold, especially the club’s world-class No.15.
And Foden is now desperate to ‘right the wrongs’ in Belfast tonight (ko 6pm).
“(With the tweet) I was more talking about myself really because as a professional athlete you have to be self-critical anyway,” said Foden.
“You have one of those games where things don’t go right and you don’t play well individually, but usually I’m surrounded by such good players that I can be covered up and we’ll win the game.
“But I had such a bad off day and the team had such a bad off day that it’s more noticeable.
“And obviously Jared Payne having a worldy, scoring a try and getting man of the match topped things off.
“For me it was just about highlighting the fact that I’d played badly to the fans and apologising to them for having to watch that.
“We’re a better team than we were on Friday and hopefully it won’t happen again.
“Hopefully I’ll put in a big performance this weekend to start righting those wrongs.”
While Saints will be eager to claim a win in Belfast to keep their Heineken Cup hopes alive, a positive performance is the minimum expectation.
With tough Premiership games against Harlequins, Saracens and Exeter on the horizon, what the club needs most is an injection of belief.
Something to make them feel good again before the rigours of league action return.
“That’s what we’re talking about - it’s not just one game and this competition, we need to get things back on track,” said Foden.
“Obviously Ulster are a very difficult team to beat there and we need to improve our performance because if we go there and perform like we did last Friday, we’ll get beaten by 50-odd points.
“We’re looking to go and win there and we need to find a way of breaking them down.
“We’ve done a lot more analysis this week, so it’s been a lot more self-critical in areas and hopefully we’ll be able to have a little bit more joy all around the field.”
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