By Dave Woods BBC Sport

The secret of St Helens' jubilant July can be traced back to one of the lowest points in the club's recent history.

After the devastating Challenge Cup final defeat to Wigan, coach Ian Millward asked just one question of his players: "Are you good enough to get over this?"

Millward, sometimes controversial, always colourful, is BBC Sport Online's man of the month for June.

But in accepting the honour he takes his hat off to his players - in fact several hats.

"I can't take off enough hats for my squad. They have been magnificent," he said.

"After we had let ourselves down in the Challenge Cup, we had a debriefing, analysing the game.

"I asked them if they could learn from it, if they could take on board what had happened and get better as a result.

"Their attitude has been superb, especially with some key players out. We proved that with our win at Leeds and especially at Wakefield.

"People say 'well, you'd expect to beat Wakefield', but in the last two years I've been here we lost to them, so to win there showed we had got our attitude right."

The special St Helens spirit that Millward has created seems to have got even stronger in recent weeks, the more the squad has been decimated by injuries.

"It's something we don't talk about injuries. We don't think 'aw, there's another injury', we see it as a chance for someone else who we have faith in to come into the side and do the job.

"Plus big sides need challenges and coaches need challenges - having had players like Paul Sculthorpe, Keiron Cunningham, Paul Newlove and Sean Long missing has given us that challenge."

The BBC Sport Online honour is also in recognittion of Ian Millward's success as Lancashire coach in the 2-0 beating of Yorkshire over the two-match series.

His involvement in the Origin games has certainly given him fond memories.

"Four weeks before the matches I was wishing I hadn't accepted the job, because I wanted the week off like I'd given the other St Helens players.

"Two weeks before I thought 'yeah, it will be alright'.

"One week before, I started getting excited and then when I got into camp with the players I thought it was great. It was good integrating with the players at a different level, another challenge for me."

After an award-winning and unbeaten June, Millward now has a couple of wishes for July.

He is hoping to see his star scrum-half Sean Long back playing on 19 July at home to the London Broncos, and also hoping for a very narrow win for his home country Australia against Great Britain in the Sydney Test match.

"I obviously want Australia to win, but I want everyone to sit up and recognise what a very good side this Great Britain team is."