Great Saints Tries - Apollo Perelini v London Broncos 1996

This week sees the first meeting between Saints and London Broncos since 2014. Saints ran out 58-16 winners on July 19 that year, while the last time London visited St Helens was earlier that season when they left on the end of a 48-18 score-line on May 1. Interestingly, only six of the 17 Saints players on duty for that July fixture remain at the club. There has been a fair amount of change among the playing staff at Saints as they continue to chase what would be their seventh Super League title. The Broncos were relegated from Super League at the end of the 2014 season, while Saints went on to complete the double of League Leaders Shield and Super League Grand Final.

Now, after four years in the relative wilderness of the Championship the Broncos are back in the top flight. They will face Saints in a BetFred Super League Round 5 clash this Friday night (March 8). Meetings between the two haven’t always been classics, but there is one particular game which stands out. Saints visited London on July 27 1996 in the midst of a nail-chomping title-race. They led Wigan by a single point in the penultimate season in which the first side past the post would take the crown. The advent of the playoffs and Grand Final concepts was still two years away, and again it would be Wigan annoying everyone by winning the first of those events in 1998. Back in 1996 as Saints prepared to face Tony Curry’s Broncos outfit it was the Knowsley Road side who held a vital edge at the top of the table. Wigan had been held to a draw by London earlier in the season, a Terry Matterson touchline conversion stunning the Warriors and opening the door for a Saints side which would go on to claim its first title since 1975.

Yet it would never have happened without events at Charlton Athletic’s The Valley on that July day. A day when the newly launched video refereeing system showed just how vital it can be in deciding the destination of the game’s major honours. Few decisions in its history have been more controversial and more vital than the one on Apollo Perelini’s try which ultimately turned this game in Saints favour. The system continues to cause controversy 23 years on. Left to this writer it would be pitched down the metaphorical garden path at the next opportunity. But on that day every Saints fan was grateful for its existence.

Saints had already reached Wembley for the Challenge Cup final before a ball had been kicked in the new all-singing, all-dancing, all-video-refereeing Super League. Shaun McRae’s men had seen off Castleford, Rochdale, Salford and Widnes on route to a first Wembley appearance in five years. At that point they had not won the cup since 1976, another long wait that would come to an end in thrilling circumstances in 1996 in an all-time classic final clash with Bradford Bulls.

Super League was launched with much fanfare in Paris, where Sheffield Eagles were the visitors for Paris St.Germain. Hopes were high that a credible European competition could thrive in place of the old first division. Lazy stereotypes of northern grime and cloth-caps were hard to shake for rugby league. In going fully professional and adding a bit more cosmopolitan glamour in the shape of PSG in particular it was finally thought time to step out of the shadow of rugby union. If anything, we have made even less progress towards that aim in 2019 than we have in discerning how to use video technology without diminishing the spectacle.

Saints first ever Super League game was at Workington Town. The Cumbrian side had been controversially included in the new competition at the expense of Widnes, who even back then found that events off the field conspired against them. Saints showed the size of the gap between them and Workington with a thumping 62-0 win to start the campaign. By the time they travelled to London for this one they had lost just twice. They were thumped 35-16 at Central Park by Wigan in mid-June and just a fortnight later managed to concede 50 points at a Bradford Bulls side which would be swept along to a third-placed finish by Bullmania, a young Robbie Paul and former Saints Bernard Dwyer, Paul Loughlin and Sonny Nickle who had arrived in West Yorkshire as part of the deal that brought Paul Newlove to St Helens. The Bulls beat Wigan that season also, another crucial result in ending Saints long title drought.

Newlove scored 36 tries for Saints in the 1996 Super League campaign, grabbing one in this game along with his centre partner Scott Gibbs. It would turn out to be Gibbs’ last game for Saints after joining in 1994 from Welsh rugby union. He left the game with a hand injury, missing the rest of the season before returning to the other code with Swansea in 1997. Just as an aside, my sister was at university in Swansea around that time and we bumped into him in a chippy. He was a true gent in the face of my drunken interrogation about his rugby league career so it was hard to begrudge him his move back home even if he was sorely missed. Newlove would stick around for five more years but it wasn’t until Kevin Iro arrived in 1999 that Saints had a really top class centre on the opposite side.

Newlove’s try one was of three which gave Saints an early 14-2 lead. Perelini claimed his first with the other added by winger and former Saints physio Joey Hayes. Yet the game was level by half-time as Russell Bawden went over before Scott Roskill managed to go 60 metres from a scrum. The Broncos took the lead through a Greg Barwick penalty before Roskill scored again to widen the margin. Vila Matautia went over next from Ian Pickavance’s offload before Gibbs crossed to put Saints back in front. Still the Broncos refused to yield, producing yet another lead change when Steve Rosolen went over for a try converted by Barwick with the help of an upright.

And so the moment arrived for Perelini. The Samoan legend took a pass from Karle Hammond and plunged with everything he had towards the try-line, trying to burrow beneath the posse of defenders about to converge on him. The prop ended up on his back over the line but after what at the time seemed an unusual amount of replays the message came down to on-field referee Stuart Cummings that Perelini had grounded the ball. The Widnes whistler, entirely superfluous on most of the Sky Sports rugby league coverage these days, was suddenly one of most popular men in St Helens as he pointed to the spot to confirm the score.

Saints then clung on through a quite agonising period of injury time to seal their 32-28 winwhich kept them top of the table. Wigan responded with a 34-26 win over Halifax a day later but it only kept them within a point of McRae’s side. If Saints could win their last four league matches they would be crowned champions and their 21-year wait would end. A 20-16 win at Castleford was as squeaky as it gets a week later, but there was a great deal more comfort about the last three games as Saints went to Paris and won 32-12 before putting a combined total of 134 points on Sheffield Eagles and Warrington in their final two matches. That 66-14 victory over Warrington was a day of celebration for Saints who picked up the trophy to become the first ever Super League winners. They scored 13 tries against John Dorahy’s Wire to put an exclamation mark on their triumph, with Alan Hunte grabbing a hat-trick, braces for Newlove, Anthony Sullivan and Tommy Martyn and a try each for Hayes, Bobbie Goulding, Adam Fogerty, and Derek McVey.

For their part London finished fourth, an achievement which they bettered the following year by finishing second to a by then unstoppable Bradford Bulls. Those finishes would have been good enough for playoff appearances in subsequent seasons but came just too early. Now as they return survival in the Super League is the main priority. It is going to be a tough ask too, but they will be heartened by their victories over Wakefield and Wigan so far in 2019 as they prepare to visit unbeaten Saints this weekend.