He said: "The Saints game was a chance to push on. I described it as a gateway game to the players because it was a gate to the top six or being back into a battle.
"We can't afford to beat ourselves up now because we have got some big games coming up around the corner. We can't dwell on it, we must take the positives and look at the good rugby we played and try scoring chances.
"We have got to keep trying to build our game for 80 minutes, we didn't do that today, we did it for 60 minutes and the last 20 was disappointing.
"I'm not going to criticise my players because they work so hard," he added. "Other people might not think that because they see that we have turned a ball over at the ruck or conceded a try and lost the game.
"But I know how hard the players are working at every area of their game. They really are trying to get as accurate as they can in all areas.
"The effort was there, the enthusiasm was there. But the accuracy wasn't, we have got to keep working at it.
"We weren't a bad team out there today against Saints. We just didn't nail down our chances which would have made a big difference to us. We have got to reflect on that, take the emotion out of it when we go through the tape.
"We go down to Gloucester next week and we went there last year and won when nobody expected us to do anything. We have to battle and fight for every game now."
