Saints sleepwalk to victory
As per Pele’s infamous tactics board plan the rag-tag mob of inmates in 1981 cheese-fest Escape To Victory did indeed Escape To Victory and in thrilling style too. Or was it a 4-4 draw? That Saints Blog You Quite Like doesn’t rightly remember and has not seen the film since it stopped playing Subbuteo on its mum’s dining table. Clearly Justin Holbrook did not use this much loved but actually quite rubbish Stallone vehicle as a motivational film for Saints ahead of this fairly average performance. It was a dire affair as Saints sleepwalked to a victory. The positives are that it is another win and it keeps the red vee top of the BetFred Super League as we inch nearer to the Super 8s and the playoffs. But that’s just about it.
The stats don’t really say too much about why this was such an underwhelming affair. Saints tally of 12 handling errors on the night is around about their average for what has been a stellar season so far, while the same is true of the eight clean breaks they managed to muster against Steve McNamara’s side. The one telling statistic is in the metres gained. Zeb Taia led the way with a modest 117 while Lukes Thompson and Douglas were close by on 114 and 111 respectively. The only other forward to top the 100 metre mark was Kyle Amor with 114. In the backs Ryan Morgan’s Herculean effort of four metres on two carries suggests that the balance the attack seems to have had in recent weeks was sat next to Ben Barba in the hospitality suites. Having said that Tommy Makinson was again outstanding with what little ball he did get, making 110 metres and soaring above the Dragons defence to score another acrobatic miracle of a try which, along with Morgan Knowles’ jinking run to the line and two pieces of Mark Percival magic lit up this rancid pudding of a game.
Holbrook took the probably wise decision to rest Barba following his dramatic, stretcher-assisted, neck-braced exit from the win at Salford last week. Catalans were always hugely unlikely to beat Saints on their own patch given the form of both so far in 2018. The Australian fullback is likely to be a key component in Saints bid to beat Castleford next week and thus keep the dream of a first Wembley appearance in 10 years alive. James Roby was deemed ready to return but even he was short of his super-human best, bothering with just 28 tackles but managing 94 metres on 10 carries, with nine trademark scoots from acting half. Lomax filled the fullback role and got his name on the scoresheet with the opening try, while Theo Fages took over at six and was largely anonymous. By the end just short of 10,000 people probably considered escaping from the stadium some sort of victory in itself.
White with a red vee
Stand by for a moan. It may be a small thing, unlikely to bring the rugby league world to a standstill, but doesn’t anybody else have an issue with Saints playing in their black away strip on their own turf? The match was sponsored by ginger beer peddlers Crabbies, who also sponsor Saints unsightly black alternative shirt which looks about as much like a Saint shirt as I resemble Leonardo Di Caprio. Having stated on these pages before that I am sick of the likes of Hull FC and Salford showing up in colours that would stop traffic I was not enamoured with the decision to get the away kit out of the cupboard for this one.
I am aware of the arguments in favour. Crabbies sponsorship of the game more than likely depended on the wearing of the alternative strip, monstrous as it is, which in turn meant that a hefty consignment of coin would be coming the club’s way as a result. But let me startle you in this Thatcherite, capitalist shithole we call 2018 by telling you that I don’t give two brown ones about sponsorship or the money involved. I want my team to look like my team when they are playing at home. I don’t want the opposition, dressed in white with a partly red vee (with a bit of yellow or something thrown in) to look more like Saints than Saints do. People said it was practical to change because of the Catalans colours, and because their alternative also features some fine redvee-ery. But isn’t that their bloody problem? If Catalans alternative shirt has so many similarities with their home shirt that it makes a change redundant then it is not a serviceable alternative and the RFL or whoever runs this racket these days should politely tell them to go back to the designers and ask for a rethink.
Grace Out?
Ratcheting up the controversy this week I want to talk to you about Regan Grace. He scored his sixth and seventh tries of the Super League season in the second half which on the face of it suggests that he is doing exactly what he is in the side to do. Yet his four-pointers masked a fairly fraught performance, particularly in the first half. Grace was twice acquainted with the touchline as the ball sailed hopelessly past him into touch while also looking shaky under the high ball and making a dinner that even your dog wouldn’t eat of a long kick downfield which ended up gifting a scrum to the Dragons deep in Saints territory.
Now it just so happens that Adam Swift was recalled to the 19-man squad for this one after a six-week lay-off. Swift injured his shoulder in the win at Hull KR at the end of March and hasn’t seen first team duty since. Yet if Grace continues this level of abject dithery it can surely be only a matter of time before Swift regains the left wing slot that he lost to Grace last season. Saints play Castleford in the Challenge Cup at the Mend-A-Hose Jungle next weekend and the young welsh winger could find himself a target if Daryl Powell can stand to sit through the film of this one for long enough to devise a strategy. Luke Gale’s knee injury means he won’t be available to pepper those raking kicks in Grace’s general direction but in Ben Roberts, Jake Trueman and Jamie Ellis the Tigers have enough in their ranks to make Grace’s fallibility an issue.
Nobody should write Grace off. He is still only a year into his first team career at Saints and he has shown flashes of how elusive and effective he can be. But if the team is going to be picked on form then we must be very close to the point at which Swift comes in and Grace takes a few weeks to consider how best he can improve. If that happens then Grace’s chance will come again.
What’s the point of the Dragons anyway?
Thursday night games on television are hardly famed for their away support and resultant hair-raising atmosphere, but last night’s affair took the concept of a flat atmosphere to new levels. At times it was positively funereal. It looked as though Saints might be wearing black out of respect for the death of the concept of away support. We can’t reasonably expect anyone to travel to what used to be Lancashire from the south of France on a Thursday night really, so questions need to be asked about why Sky chose this game for that particular weekly slot. Especially since it was never likely to be entertaining in the competitive sense. It was either going to be a one-sided stroll like those seen against Huddersfield and Salford in the last two weeks, or we’d get what we got which was a sleepy but largely routine Saints win. As one observer had it, why do Sky insist on showing Saints v Catalans every year on the back of one close finish six years ago?
But questions also need asking about what the Dragons, with their non-existent away support, bring to Super League anyway. They have been around for 12 years now during which time they have reached the playoffs and one Wembley cup final but won precisely nothing. This year’s vintage have been particularly awful, winning just three of their first 13 Super League games. They are likely to avoid the ignominy of relegation purely through the game’s obsession with keeping a non-UK team around and the mouth-frothing prospect of French ‘derbies’ with Toulouse in the top flight. On telly and everything. Their remit was to help grow the game in France and improve the French national team. The captain of that particular venture can be found running around in the red vee. Yes him, the anonymous one. You can argue that is success because a French player is in one of the top teams in the land. Or you can call it a failure because the French outfit hasn't held on to its best players. In addition, France were a shambles at the World Cup in Australia last year, failing even to beat Lebanon in the group stage while taking hidings from England and Australia.
When you rail against the idea of a French or a Canadian side in Super League you get accused of being against the expansion and therefore the greater good of the game. Yet is shoehorning teams from those countries into Super League the best route to growing the game internationally? Why are we not looking to establish credible professional leagues in those countries instead of juggling with the absurd practicalities involved with Canada in particular? I’ve been offered the argument that this is impossible in France because the Vichy government banned rugby league and it has never recovered. Yet this was nearly 80 years ago. If interest in rugby league there is genuine then it should be allowed to blossom naturally. This way feels like a token effort just so we have an answer for the union-lovers who complain that only northern English teams play this game.
Road Trip
Unfathomably, Saints do not play at home again in Super League for five weeks. Following the cup tie at Castleford next week is the delights of the Magic Weekend in Newcastle, when 14 teams will descend upon the Tyneside city to distort their respective competitions with reckless abandon. This time around we have Widnes, a game which promises almost nothing. But you’ll have a great time if you are going so let’s crack on with that. Then it is Castleford again, less Escape To Victory than Groundhog Day as we face Powell’s side in another Thursday night affair which does at least promise to be more entertaining than the Catalans game.
The first week of June brings with it the quarter-finals of the Challenge Cup and thus the only chance of playing at home (depending on beating the Tigers next week and then receiving a home draw) before Hull KR are the visitors on June 8. It’s a hectic rugby league schedule from February to October and we are constantly debating ways to give the players a rest or shorten the season. Yet here we are facing a five-week period without a home league game. It just seems odd. A paradox. What it also represents is a test for Holbrook’s side who will find those two trips to Castleford challenging and revealing in terms of what they can expect to be in contention for come the business end of the season. Will our Wembley dreams end in humiliation as they have in each of the past two years, or is a first appearance at the soon-to-be-flogged national stadium in a decade finally on the cards?
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