5 Talking Points From Castleford 18 Saints 36

This was no rope-a-dope

I wasn't at the Castleford game today. Truth be told I'm a bit of a homer, although I was one of those crazy enough to travel to Huddersfield on the proverbial freezing night in February. A Huddersfield whose Premier League football stadium ran out of hot water at half-time and who deemed one refreshment kiosk enough to serve our entire travelling army.

So without turning this into a literary version of a crap Michael Portillo travel show the point is that I had to settle for the BBC's live coverage of what looked on paper the best tie of the Challenge Cup's sixth round. If all I'd had was the audio I would have been left with the feeling that Saints were lucky. That they'd been pummelled throughout and stole the win thanks to a few admittedly breathtaking counter attacks. Jonathan Davies, of who I am always wary due the double whammy of his being a union man and the story he tells about turning his back on Saints when Widnes made a late, better offer, could hardly have been more affronted by Saints victory. Nor could Brian Noble, shoe-horning Australianisms into his descriptions like a man desperately auditioning for a role in Wentworth Prison. Every time Castleford attacked it was fantastic and brilliant. Every time Saints scored it was a sucker punch which rendered the Tigers unlucky.

All of which is, to coin a phrase, a load of whack. This Rumble In The Mend-A-Hose Jungle was nothing like 1974 in Zaire. Then, Muhammad Ali, having warned everyone that 'I'm gonna dance..' in his tussle with a fearsome pre-grill George Foreman, proceeded to stand still in front of Foreman and absorb everything he had before finishing him with a lightning counter-attack. Ali's strategy was labelled the 'rope-dope' and his victory written into sporting legend. This match won't be remembered in 44 years time but if you're of a mind to dig out old film of Saints games and you happen upon this one in 2062 you will find that Saints were much the better side throughout.

Barba too good.....again....

Had they not been fixated on the Tigers' non-existent ill-fortune the Beeb's commentary team might have been more able to enjoy the performance of Ben Barba a little more. The Man Of Steel Elect scored a hat-trick of tries and was involved in most of the others as Saints crossed the whitewash six times to Castleford's three. Barba's first contribution was to snuff out a Cas kick that had bounced mischievously close to the Saints goal line before helping it around the corner to Regan Grace. The Welshman, under pressure following some iffy displays and the return to fitness of Adam Swift, took off on a 90-metre run to the line to put Saints in front. No changes of direction, no looking around him in anticipation of an inevitable clubbing, just a straight, blistering run to the line. No defender got anywhere near him. It was everything we had been waiting for from Grace.

The next time the Tigers tried something similar Barba didn't need Grace. He had enough of his own as he latched on to some slapstick attempts to regather by Daryl Powell's men to race the length of the field to put Saints two scores up. Pat-a-cake, Pat-a-cake Barba's gone. Davies wailed that Jy Hitchcox should have forced Barba into touch as he came across to cover but Barba had the strength and class to get there. His second was perhaps generously awarded by the video referee Phil Bentham on the basis of the very summer-era idea of fingertip control, but the run that led to it had been bewildering as was that which led to his third. It looked at several points as if Barba might have spurned the chance as supporting players drifted by empty-handed like karaoke singers trying to wrestle the mic from Tom Jones, but the Aussie genius knew exactly what he was doing.

Genius is an overused word and there is a danger that the focus on Barba will detract from the fact that this is the form team in the country with or without him. Yet amid the screams from Wigan it is right to celebrate Barba's astonishing abilities. At times he's embarrassing the competition in the way that Michael Jordan did to the NBA 25 years ago. In a recent WA12 Rugby League Show poll (please do take a listen, every Monday from 6-8pm on wa12radio.net) I voted for Jamie Lyon ahead of Barba and Mal Meninga as Saints best overseas star of the modern era. That was mostly down to the fact that Lyon was brilliant over two seasons, helping Saints to silverware in 2006 with a Grand Final and Challenge Cup double. Yet if Barba sticks around that long and can pick up a few winners medals along the way he will be right up there alongside anyone that has come before him. And while he is here let's try and enjoy him even if you don't support Saints. It's odd to on the one hand bemoan the lack of quality in Super League and then in the other try to dismiss the attention that Barba gets as hyperbole.

Saints comfortable in second gear

We've seen how Barba can devastate opposition and perhaps today was an example of what a difference he can make. But the bold truth is that Saints would have won this game with or without their star man. They weren't quite at their best collectively. Jon Wilkin was involved in far too much of the ball handling in midfield again. Our right edge of Ryan Morgan and Tommy Makinson was again starved of good early ball and on the other side Zeb Taia won't consider this among his best performances in the red vee. Consequently Mark Percival was quiet as was Grace, his full length effort aside. Hell, even James Roby made a couple of errors that the word 'uncharacteristic' doesn't really cover.

But Saints had more possession and territory, more drive and were far superior in defence. Imagine what they will do when all of these players so improved under Justin Holbrook are at the top of their game. Castleford were fairly ordinary with injuries to Luke Gale, Ben Roberts and others proving too much on top of the fact that they have failed to replace Zak Hardaker at fullback. Saints will probably have to play better than this at some point to go all the way to a first Wembley final in 10 years but they are well capable of doing just that. The draw for the quarter-finals should hold no fears.

Less is more with the video referee

A prominent former Super League referee recently told me via Twitter that the average number of video reviews for a televised game is 2.7. Stunned by this, I channelled my inner geek and began to count the reviews in games I saw over the next few weeks. Alright, maybe my geek is not so well described as 'inner'. Nevertheless, over the next month or so I didn't see a single game with less than five reviews. Some had five or more by half-time. There's either been some creative stat-collecting on video reviews or there has been a hefty increase since the figure of 2.7 per game was calculated.

How refreshing then that today's game had so few. Of the nine tries scored only Barba's second was subject to the emotional evaporation that is the video review. Gone are the days when you could celebrate a try from in front of the TV with anything like a deeply held conviction that your team had actually scored. More painfully, if your own team's line is breeched in any measure of doubtful circumstance you are now likely to go through the pain twice.

They probably got that one video review call wrong in the spirit of the game as I've said (if not the law) but a system which only checks for grounding issues would seem a lot healthier. At the very least the canning of obstruction reviews is an urgent must if we are to preserve this game as a spectacle. No sport is compelling enough as a spectacle to withstand having the emotion sucked out of it as every scoring play is reviewed, NFL-style. One cynical observer suggested that the BBC, not being a commercial channel, is less interested than its broadcasting rival in having a sponsor advertised on a big screen every five minutes. That isn't what we pay a license fee for. Not that Jonathan Davies is. But surely at some point all broadcasters should get around to the view that an emotion-free, stop-start game isn't going to be a ratings winner. And if that happens who is going to pay for the advertising space anyway?

Can Saints go all the way?

With Barba in the side the short answer is yes. You wouldn't be surprised if, as I write this, Barba and Saints are on their way to winning Eurovision. But the Challenge Cup is a strange beast. It can be cruel, as anyone who saw the BBC's excellent documentary on the 1968 Watersplash final will testify. The story of Don Fox's missed conversion with the last kick of the final which handed the cup to Leeds was genuinely moving. The knowledge that his hitherto wonderful career, even his life, would be remembered for that one moment must have haunted Fox for the rest of his days.

Which only goes to show that anything can happen in knockout football. The thrills and spills it provides are what has driven the establishment of the playoffs and Grand Final. Everyone knows that a first past the post system would be fairer and more sensible in Super League but TV demands narrative and that demands heroes and villains. In the Challenge Cup it was ever thus and that's what made it special. It's cut-throat. One bad day and you're flat out, stick-a-fork-in-you done. Maybe one bad moment can wreck your dreams, or worse as it did to Fox. There isn't a single team in the draw for the last eight, remembering that two last 16 ties are still to be played at the time of writing, that Saints will fear. Nobody that they can't beat. But if we were to be drawn away at Leeds, Wigan or Warrington we would go to any of them with a distinct sense of 'it's on the day'. You can be the best, sometimes by a distance, but you still have to do it on the day to get to and win at Wembley. Our optimism is justified but it must be mixed with a degree of caution.