ST PAT’S rediscovered their winning touch last Sunday in Group 10 premier league, but holding onto it will be no easy task when they travel to Glen Willow Stadium to play the Mudgee Dragons tomorrow.

The Saints avoided a third straight loss last weekend when they held on by the skin of their teeth against Cowra Magpies in the grand final replay, prevailing  24-22.

But just as that clash of last season’s two leading sides had plenty of feeling, so too will tomorrow’s match

Pat’s last met the Dragons in the 2014 preliminary final at Carrington Park. That game saw two tries in the last three minutes plus a post-siren Garry Reilly conversion from the sideline get the Saints home.

Like the blue and whites, the Dragons head into tomorrow’s match on the back of a winning performance. However, they had a much easier time in dispatching the Orange Hawks 22-4.

Both teams will have key personnel missing, but Pat’s coach Kurt Hancock still believes a repeat of last Sunday’s performance will not be enough this time around.

“Their side’s been going through a similar thing with players as I found out when talking to Jack [Afamasaga, Dragons coach] and Corin Smith [Dragons centre] at Western Division training,” he said.

“It’ll be tight. Last year we lost to them by one point then we had two close wins. There’s been a history of close games and we’re preparing for this one to be exactly the same.

“We came up with 19 errors last week and just about everyone had one. We dug ourselves into a hole with that and it was almost too hard to get out. We just need to focus and continue to believe in the structures that we’ve been practicing.”

Hancock knows he needs greater consistency from his men, adding their tendency to play in patches this year has been frustrating.

“It’s great to win those tight games, but in the last 15 minutes those penalties and errors caught up with us. The effort was there, they had to hang in there to get the two points,” he said.

“I’ve sounded like a broken record at training the last couple of weeks, but I’ve been telling them about the consequences of those penalties and errors and it happened there in that last 15 minutes.

“Our first 20 minutes we’ve also been doing too much defence each week and we can’t keep doing that.”

For once the Saints’ line up hasn’t deviated much from the previous week.

Adam Morton returns to the wing though Jarrod Tyack’s great debut performance in that position against Cowra sees him with a place on the bench.

The only other change sees Nick Miller return to the front row, pending a fitness test.

ST PAT’S: 1 Tim Collins, 2 Adam Morton, 3 Mick Armstrong, 4 Dave Howard, 5 Curtis Boardman, 6 Garry Reilly, 7 Matt Tilley, 8 Luke Newsome, 9 Benjamin John, 10 Nick Miller, 11 Brady Cheshire, 12 Corey Averio, 13 Derryn Clayton, 14 Hudson White, 15 Jacob Bell, 16 Jack Mackey, 17 Jarrod Tyack.