They’re down, but not quite out and time is running out.

They tackle fourth-placed Taree Wildcats at Findlay Park as coach Mark Rogers aims to manage his team the best he can.

They’ve had a hectic schedule of three games in seven days.

Saints were close, but not close enough last Saturday when they went down 3-2 to Camden Haven.

Rogers knows they again played patches of good football although it wasn’t good enough.

“We’ve been in this situation before,” Rogers said.

“We don’t want to compete with the best teams, we want to beat them and last week our best performance was good, but not good enough and we came up short.”

In the last encounter between the two sides in Taree, the pace of the Wildcats strikers proved the difference.

“We got done 3-0 down there and they got in behind us,” Rogers said.

Saints defence will have its work cut out as they try to minimise the impact of the Wildcats attractive style of football.

Saints are currently 10 points out of finals contention and with a maximum of 24 points to pick up from their remaining eight games, the time to make their move is now.

“They’re a proud group of players and have shown what they’re capable of,” Rogers said.

Michael Goodwin is almost back to full fitness after a couple of brief stints off the bench, while the coach also expects Mick Potter to return.

On the flip side, Michael Snow is unlikely to play and Nathaniel Worcester and Dan Gardner are a couple of weeks away.

“We’ve shown in our last two games that if we can keep the same combinations we’ll start to get the results we want,” Rogers said.