5 Talking Points From Saints 34 Wakefield Trinity 30

Barba should have left the game earlier

With five Saints having travelled back from Denver this week, four of whom took part in a high intensity test match at altitude, there were always going to be selection dilemmas for coach Justin Holbrook. Yet the inclusion of Ben Barba was not among them as far as we knew before kick-off. The Aussie star had enjoyed a week off and a trip to Tenerife in the build up to this one and seemed ready to unleash his brilliance on yet another hapless victim in the shape of Chris Chester's men.

Yet something wasn't right with Barba. There didn't seem a problem for much of the first half. With the half time hooter not far away Barba shrugged off a couple of Trinity tacklers and seared through the line into open space. It was all over. We'd seen it so many times in 2018. Barba gets into open space and nobody catches him. It's why he's the league's leading try-scorer and a more certain Man Of Steel than Henry Cavill. Perhaps Barba has been at the Kryptonite because instead of the usual predictable but joyous outcome he slowed right down and allowed the Wakefield cover to catch him. He then did a passable Regan Grace impersonation, looking around him for support, passing the responsibility on to others.

If that was odd things got weirder in the second half. Down 20-6 at the break Wakefield ran all over Saints in the first 20 minutes of the second half. They ran in four tries to take an astonishing 26-20 lead going into the final quarter. Barba was culpable on a number of occasions. Easily out jumped for a high ball by Jacob Miller. Fumbling a bog standard kick for territory and then inexplicably jumping out of the defensive line on his own goal-line to allow Mason Caton-Brown to scoot past Zeb Taia to score.

He'd arguably left it too late but before the hour mark Holbrook had seen enough and withdrew Barba, moving Jonny Lomax to fullback and introducing Theo Fages from the bench to play at stand off. Holbrook alluded to an injury in his post match interview and revealed that in hindsight he felt it would have been better to make the change at that point. It's understandable that he did not. Barba is a difference maker and there's always the hope that he can shake off a knock during a game and get back to his best. He trusted Barba who was insistent on staying in the game. Even when Barba left the field he did so grumpily, though I don't believe his show of emotion is a particularly worrying thing. Great players want to play and Barba's reaction just demonstrated that. Inwardly he will have known he was having one. That would have been troubling him as much as the fact that he was being taken out of the firing line. It was a key decision from Holbrook and one which he got right. Eventually. Fears that it will affect Barba's relationship with the club or commitment to the cause seem premature.

Saints lucky on a couple of key refereeing decisions

It doesn't matter what happens in a game the referee will always get slaughtered by a section of the fans, especially on social media. Even more so when the referee's name is James Child about whom most of the rugby league watching public, not just Saints fans, have made up their minds. Yet if Child was guilty of making one or two mistakes he made them as much for Saints benefit as to their detriment.

Consult your rule books now as we examine whether or not Child should have awarded a penalty try early in the game when Barba clearly used his feet to prise the ball from the grasp of James Batchelor as the Wakefield man set about grounding the ball. A penalty was given but not a penalty try. This leads me to believe that the penalty try was not an option. That the offence is not one punishable in that way regardless of whether the impeded player was certain to score. But if not, why not? Barba prevented a certain try but did so illegally. It's not comparable to plain old ball stealing in the act of scoring. If we start giving penalty tries for that then how is a defender meant to prevent a try in that situation? But use of the feet is potentially dangerous and should be afforded a stricter deterrent.

Penalty try or not it was surprising that a yellow card was not issued to Barba for what surely, if the penalty try is off the table, is at least a professional foul. Child acknowledged the offence by giving the penalty but decided to let Barba off the hook. But yeah, he's got anti-Saints agenda just like everyone else who ever picked up a whistle.

If Child was lenient there he was just plain wrong to award Taia's try which effectively sealed the win late on. Saints came back superbly from that Wakefield second half onslaught and probably deserved the win. But they got a leg up when Child took the out of character not to have Taia's try reviewed by video referee Ben Thaler. Who also hates us. Doesn't he? The replay clearly showed that Taia's ball-carrying arm had hit the ground before he made a second movement to ground the ball but Thaler was not invited to get involved and the try stood. To be fair to Child he could not have seen Taia's arm making contact with the ground and was correct in his assertion that the ball had been grounded. But in a world where not just Child but all Super League refs review everything, a policy which will soon enter and ruin football once VAR hits the Premier League, it is staggering that Child did not request Thaler's help. Saints dodged a bullet there. Just don't expect that fact to be acknowledged in the Facebook group.

Richardson try was the right call

Whatever you think of video reviews and VAR, and both have ne spontaneously combusting at times, they got it right for Danny Richardson's first half try. The young Saints half didn't have his best night, particularly with the boot. He botched two kickable conversions, sent a kick-off out on the full, planted another one so deep it would have gone dead on two pitches and skied one attacking kick straight up in the air. If it had been Jon Wilkin making that effort it would have had some fans googling coffee references and yawning on about punditry and the absence of a good telling off behind the posts. Richardson will go largely unchallenged for it but he's young and so that's what you get. If he kicks like that when he's 30 he'll be getting the Wilkin treatment. By then social media might well have developed so that angry fans who have never seen a game outside of their living rooms can digitally send an electric shock to a player making a mistake. Their anger must be sated.

I digress. Despite Richardson's shaky performance he was alert enough to pick up a loose ball and score after Makinson had batted Barba's high kick down via his own head. Terry O'Connor decided it was a knock-on because the ball had gone forwards off Makinson before it hit his head and went backwards. Yet surely it is only a knock-on if the ball goes forward and hits an opponent or the ground? Had Makinson knocked the ball forward and then batted it back with his hand nobody, not even O'Connor in the gantry with his mid-80s Norweb Ellery Hanley shirt on, would have been suggesting a knock-on. Why should the head be any different? Thaler knew that it wasn't and duly awarded the try, arguably saving Richardson's night in the process.

I have no problem with the Ryan Morgan pass

Saints didn't start this game all that convincingly but they did manage to get their noses in front when Grace took Mark Percival's pass following a slick move from a scrum to score the first of a double which put the Welshman in double figures for the season. Yet the advantage didn't last long. Perhaps we should have known we were in for a bit of a Disney ride when Saints gifted Wakefield a route back into the game. Taking Percival's pass Ryan Morgan saw an overlap with Dominique Peyroux and Tommy Makinson on his outside. The trouble was that Morgan was just metres from his own line and so when his attempt to quickly shift the ball on to Peyroux was batted up by Tom Johnstone it spelled trouble. All the Wakefield winger had to do was catch the ball and fall over the line. Apparent suicide from Morgan.

Morgan will get pilloried for it. Even more so if Saints had lost. Just as he did for blocking Michael Shenton's run at Castleford in last year's semi final which took the game into extra time and that still haunting Luke Gale drop goal. Morgan is a favoured target for the discontent among the fan base which isn't always fair and isn't in this case. His pass to Peyroux was not ill conceived, just poorly executed. I want to support a team that isn't afraid to play with that kind of ambition and confidence. We can't on the one hand complain about the tedium of one-out, knees-and-elbows tedium of the kind served up during the previous regime and then on the other scream the proverbial blue murder when an attempt at flair and creativity goes like an Ant McPartland Sunday drive.

The overlap was there and Morgan knew that and tried to exploit it. Why wouldn't you if the opportunity arises, even so close to your own line. You don't get anywhere without risk. Ian Millward had that philosophy and he didn't do too badly at Saints.

To convert or not to convert?

Taia's dubious try had us all exhaling with relief as it put Saints eight points up with only a few minutes remaining. Yet even then, like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction Wakefield wouldn't lay down and die. They went over in the corner through Reece Lyne to reduce the arrears to 34-30 with just over a minute remaining. The odds were still stacked against Chester's men completing what would have been a miraculous win but to aid their slim hopes they elected to forego the opportunity to convert Lyne's try.

Was this the right call? Time was very much against them but it might just have been possible to convert the try and get the game restarted. They might then have had the final set of six but with one key difference. Assuming a conversion would have been successful they would then only have needed a penalty in a kickable position to force a draw. Passing up the conversion was a win or bust call that should probably be applauded. Wigan found out earlier in the season how quickly time flies when they neglected to attempt a late try which had brought them within three on Good Friday. Still the clock beat them as it may well have beaten Wakefield but I just feel there may be an element of what if they had given themselves another option to rescue the game in Chester's mind this morning.