Catalans Dragons were made to battle for a narrow two-point win against St Helens to extend their lead to four points at the top of Super League.

The visitors strengthened their advantage when Matt Ikuvalu spun over but Lewis Dodd kept the hosts in it.

Saints kept the pressure on but could not find a breakthrough and crashed to a seventh defeat of the season.

The champions, chasing a fifth successive Super League crown, are now six points behind Catalans, who responded superbly after a chastening home defeat by Huddersfield Giants last time out.

Steve McNamara’s side completed the double against St Helens for only the second time in their history, while the hosts have registered seven losses in a season for the first time since 2017, shortly before their recent era of dominance began.

The visitors took the lead in impressive fashion despite St Helens being camped on their tryline, taking advantage of a speculative Jonny Lomax kick to break out of defence.

Johnstone motored on to an offload and showed impressive stamina to run almost the length of the field unopposed to touch down.

Just before the hooter, St Helens made their pressure count when Percival got on the end of a kick to get points on the board, but Ikuvalu’s backward grounding in the corner sent Les Dracs further ahead.

Percival left the field after failing a head injury assessment in the aftermath of trying to thwart Ikuvalu’s efforts and hooker James Roby also failed a separate HIA, ruling them both out of Saints’ Challenge Cup semi-final against Leigh Leopards on 22 July.

Will Hopoate thought he had crashed over in the corner to begin Saints’ fightback on the hour but he put a foot in touch in the build-up and Catalans’ eight-point margin remained.

St Helens made their pressure count when Dodd sprinted to the line and Joey Lussick picked up kicking duties to move them to within two points of the Dragons.

Hopoate should have stolen victory for the hosts right at the death when he raced to the corner with space on his outside, but he threw the ball into touch thinking he had support in numbers behind him.

St Helens head coach Paul Wellens:

“I thought it was fantastic the way the players turned up for each other tonight and on another day if we had nailed that final pass, the result would have fallen in our favour.

“I told the players to be disappointed that we lost but keep your heads up because there were a lot of things out there that I really liked, and we showed all the ingredients of why we’ve been a champion team for so long.

“You saw two excellent teams playing the game with a high level of intensity, and a standard which is a challenge to get to for a lot of clubs.”

Catalans Dragons full-back Sam Tomkins told BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra:

“That was probably the toughest game of the year for us physically. The ball was in play a lot, there weren’t a lot of stoppages, there were penalties and six-against but it felt like there was no time to get a breather.

“They’re the sort of games you want to be involved in. Those are the ones you want to win. If you’re going to be in it at the end of the year, those are the sorts of games you must win and hopefully that will stand us in good stead for September.

“We played poorly in the past four weeks and we got a few wins against Leigh and Hull but if we’d played better teams, they would have beaten us.

“We know we’ve not played well and we got beaten by Huddersfield last week, but when you play against Saints at Saints there’s a different feel and an intensity in training and I knew we’d turn up tonight – and we did.”

St Helens: Welsby; Hopoate, Hurrell, Percival, Bennison; Lomax, Dodd; Walmsley, Roby, Lees, Mata’utia, Bell, Knowles.

Interchanges: Lussick, McCarthy-Scarsbrook, Paasi, Delaney.

Catalans: Tomkins; Davies, Ikuvalu, Keighran, Johnstone; May, Pearce; Garcia, Seguier, Whitley, Navarette, McIlorum, McMeeken.

Interchanges: Bousquet, Chan, Dezaria, Ma’u.

Referee: Liam Moore.