Alex outlines review process at Saints after dramatic Exeter draw

The black, green and gold were hit by a second-half comeback from the Chiefs, who scored 26 unanswered points after half-time at cinch Stadium at Franklin's Gardens.

After having a day off on Monday, Saints were back in training on Tuesday as they looked back at what had happened at the weekend and ahead to the trip to Gloucester this Sunday.

And when asked how he and his team-mates analysed what happened against Exeter, Coles said: "Everyone who played will have watched the game at home in their own time and they will have their own reflections.

"We come back in and we have meetings in our mini-units so we have a lineout meeting, a scrum meeting, a defence meeting, an attack meeting to go through the bits relevant to those relevant areas.

"Then we have a whole team meeting which is more of a big picture thing, looking at what went wrong in terms of losing our momentum in the second half and what went well in the first half that we need to keep doing and making sure we don't drop off.

"We then pretty much switch focus into the next game."

On the Exeter encounter, in which Saints had looked to be in such command, Coles said: "It was a frustrating game. One of those draws that feels like a loss because of how the game panned out, how strongly we started and then not being able to follow it through in the second half. We found that really frustrating.

"We were really excited to be back at home after our pre-season games being away from home.

"There was a real buzz about coming back to the Gardens and you saw that about the way we started, with really high energy, high intensity, but we let ourselves down in the second half with some accuracy stuff and we coughed the ball up way too many times.

"Credit to them, because we saw how dangerous they can be as a team when we're loose and we give them the opportunities.

"Their back three are particularly very dangerous."

So can Saints take any positives from the showing they produced against Exeter?

"We're disappointed with the result and the second-half performance, but we're really happy with some of the stuff we did show," Coles said.

"We're trying to move on and bring a load of fresh energy and excitement into a new week.

"It's the first away game of the PREM season so we're looking forward to bringing some of the lessons we learned about playing away from home in pre-season into the first PREM game."