Saints 42 Paris St. Germain 4 SAINTS duly earned the daunting 'reward' of a World Club Challenge quarter-final trip to Brisbane Broncos after this qualifying round stroll in the sun at Knowsley Road, writes Denis Whittle.

For they had no need to extend themselves against an abysmal Paris side fielding six French amateur recruits, who scored first before the game assumed one-way traffic proportions.

Such was Saints' confidence that kickable penalties were scorned , and this preference to run the ball bore fruit with eight tries, even though PSG contrived to keep the homesters at bay for the opening16 minutes of the second half.

Television coverage, sub-standard opposition and not least the present climate of unrest at Saints spelled a meagre attendance of 3,641- the lowest at Knowsley Road for several seasons.

And they witnessed an error-ridden encounter hardly designed to pack the terraces, with a Saints' squad already lacking Bobbie Goulding, Apollo Perelini, Paul Newlove and Steve Prescott suffering another blow via a knee injury to Alan Hunte

However, the game itself was not a French farce from Saints' point of view, for there was much to admire in the skills of Rainford Carpet Tiles man-of-the-match Sean Long, who scored a try and kicked five goals.

Newly-appointed skipper Chris Joynt led from the front throughout, while others not far behind in the pecking order were tackling Trojans Julian O'Neill and Keiron Cunningham; Derek McVey with some explosive running out wide, plus superb line-clearing by Danny Arnold

Phil Bergman and Deon Bird put Shaun Mahoney over in the corner for Paris's only touchdown after three minutes, but tries from Anthony Sullivan, Cunningham, Andy Haigh, Alan Hunte and Joey Hayes gave Saints 26-5 half-time cushion.

Handling mistakes abounded on the restart and it took a surging break from Joynt to break the scoring impasse, with Hayes taking his captain's pass to notch his second try, and he was followed over the PSG line by Chris Morley and Long.

Hunte departed in the closing stages which meant, with substitutions exhausted, Saints' were down to 12 men but that was of no consequence, while the fact that the replay video was used just once was another indication of their superiority.

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