The Saints were three minutes away from not only recording a second consecutive win this Peter McDonald Premiership season over the Panthers but also from keeping their cross-city rivals scoreless after half-time.

Then the lead evaporated in the blink of an eye.

Holding a 26-14 advantage, the Saints lost the ball near their own 20m and Panthers halfback Noah Griffiths was there to run the ball in for a try and an easy conversion for Josh Rivett.

At the time Pat's had a 13-on-12 player advantage due to Willie Wright being sin binned, so while the try out of nowhere was a concern for the Saints all they would have to do was number up in defence for one more set.

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Panthers crept inside the Saints half on the fifth tackle of their final set, with around 40 seconds to go, and the big question was what option they would take.

After initially looking left, the play switched to the right wing and Panthers managed to find some space.

The ball wound up with winger Dylan Miles who put through a grubber for Claude Gordon to get the try, setting up Josh Rivett for the high pressure conversion - which he hit sweetly.

It was a draw that felt like a loss for the Saints after they had kept a frustrated Panthers completely out of the contest during the second half.

"We were lucky to get away with that, to be honest," Panthers player-coach Jake Betts said.

"When Willie [Wright] was sent off I thought she was all over. The boys really stuck on though and were lucky enough to come away with a point.

"That second half was pretty ordinary. We were finding some joy through the middle but then for some reason we went away from that. There was some silly sideways football, Pat's shut us down and we started to get frustrated.

"Our scramble defence was really good though. That's something we can be happy about."

Saints player-coach Zac Merritt - who once again missed out of playing in the derby due to injury - said it was a tough result to take after looking home and dry with three minutes to go.

"It definitely does feel like a loss. It's still a draw, and Panthers have been flying pretty high lately," he said.

"We had a couple of individual errors towards the end, which has been our season at the moment, and that's something we've got to address before moving on to next week.

"There was some good football from us in the first half and I praised that at half-time because we were playing to our structures and everything was working, and that continued into the second half.

"For 37 minutes of the second half we kept working hard but against good sides you can afford to nap off. We're still improving every week so we'll keep building on that.

"We know we're a team that can compete with the best."