Saints Memories - Cunningham Departs After Giants Draw

Saints Memories – Saints 14 Giants 14 – 2017

Things look pretty good for Saints right now. There they are, perched proudly atop the Super League table with five wins out of five to start the 2019 Super League season. They are the only team to remain undefeated in the top flight this term and won’t be feeling too worried about a trip to basement-dwelling Huddersfield Giants this weekend. The Giants remain at the foot of the table despite earning their first win of the season against floundering Wigan last time out.

Yet it is not that long ago that the Giants caused 17 kinds of uproar and turmoil right through the Saints organisation. Rick Stone brought his side to Langtree Park for an early season Super League clash on April 7 2017 having seen his side win just two of their first eight games, though they did manage a creditable 16-16 draw at Wigan in mid-March. Stone couldn’t guide his side to a win at Saints either, but the draw they earned was enough to see the legendary Keiron Cunningham ousted from his position as head coach within a couple of days.

Saints had made a fairly rocky start to 2017 by the time the Giants rolled into town that night. Cunningham’s men had a losing record after seven games, with just three wins and four losses to start the campaign. They had played a game less than Huddersfield’s eight owing to the Giants earlier participation in the Challenge Cup. When Saints did win against Leeds on opening night (6-4), Catalans on March 18 (28-24) and Warrington a week later (31-6) it was against the backdrop of some pretty loud dissatisfaction from the fans. The style of play was dull and boring, five drives and a kick grinding tedium which only ever threatened points through sheer weight of possession and field position. That conservatism might have seen Cunningham get a pass had the team been winning regularly, but having already lost at Leigh, Hull FC and Salford as well as at home to Wakefield Trinity there was considerable pressure on the coach heading into the match.

It started well enough. Fresh from his magical flicked pass to Jack Owens which won the game for Saints in the south of France, Theo Fages helped himself to two first half tries. The second was a magnificent effort as the Frenchman twisted the blood of Giants youngster Darnell McIntosh to go over in the south west corner. Adam Swift added another on that side of the ground to help Saints build what looked like an unassailable 14-0 lead at half-time. Even in the darkest of days Saints rarely blew such a significant half-time advantage at home. Even the sides of the 1980s which would regularly trail in 10-15 points behind the league winners would have felt safe with a 14-point lead at home at the break. The more professional, highly decorated Saints of the Super League era should have breezed it.

With 20 minutes to go they still held that advantage. Yet their lack of imagination with ball in hand had seen them unable to add to their own points tally. It would prove costly when McIntosh emulated Fages by grabbing a quick double, and then when Sam Wood sneaked in at the north west corner. Had Danny Brough managed to land the conversion from the touchline Stone’s men would have earned a remarkable win. As it was the spoils were shared, and Cunningham was a man heading for the gallows.

The weekend was full of rumour and counter-rumour about Cunningham’s future on social media. By the Monday, Saints announced his departure after a two-year stint. It brought to an end his 24-year association with his home town club as player and coach. While it was still early in the 2017 campaign, and although Cunningham had reached the playoffs in each of his two full seasons in charge since taking over from Nathan Brown at the end of the 2014 season the parting of the ways didn’t seem unjust or untimely. Only the top four would make the playoffs at the end of the 2017 season under the Super 8s structure. There were real fears that the sleep-inducing an often ineffective rugby on show would see Saints miss out for the first time since playoffs were introduced to Super League in 1998.

Cunningham, for all his brilliance as a player, had shown a dogged unwillingness to adapt his tactics or to embrace the playing style that had long been a tradition of the club. The teams the great man played in bore no resemblance to the one he put together as coach. The likes of Owens (who did not play against the Giants but was often held up as the poster boy for Cunningham’s failures), Matty Dawson (ditto), Matty Smith, Tommy Lee and Adam Walker were considered well short of the quality expected at Saints. The fans had grown tired of Cunningham extolling the virtues of what were largely ordinary players and the atmosphere at home games had become toxic. It was truly tragic that one of the greatest players ever to wear the red vee was becoming something of a villain. Some of that anger remains among the more forgetful Saints fans who have by now dismissed Cunningham’s achievements as a player and only seem to remember the stale fare offered up by Cunningham the coach.

If you look solely at the players involved Cunningham’s legacy is not all bad. Ten of the 17 on duty against the Giants have been regularly involved for Saints this season under Justin Holbrook and an 11th is still at the club but out injured in Adam Swift. The counter-argument to the idea that Cunningham helped build the team we see today is probably that despite having sufficient tools at his disposal in terms of personnel he could never mould them into an exciting, functional and consistent unit. From the moment Holbrook walked through the door a few weeks after the Huddersfield draw it became apparent that it was possible to get a tune out of the very same players who had looked so bedraggled at the end of the Cunningham tenure.

An interim team of under-19s coach Derek Traynor, assistant coach Jamahl Lolesi and legendary halfback Sean Long took on the role until Holbrook was appointed and settled in and already it looked like the change had done the squad some good. A battling performance at Wigan a week after the Giants draw saw Saints go down 18-29 but with Kyle Amor unluckily dismissed early in the game for an alleged high tackle it was felt that there were some green shoots of hope. That feeling was backed up even further when Saints shocked runaway league leaders Castleford Tigers at Langtree Park on Easter Monday. It was never going to be a long term solution, however, and despite winning at home to Leigh defeats at Widnes, Warrington and a 53-10 Challenge Cup humiliation at Castleford in early June meant that Holbrook’s in-tray was pretty full when he took full control for the first time for Saints Magic Weekend meeting with Hull FC.

Holbrook couldn’t have wished for a better start as Saints walloped the black and whites 45-0, following that up with a breath-taking 22-19 success over Wigan on May 25. Another defeat at Castleford followed before the Giants took another two points from Saints on June 16. Matty Smith’s finest hour in three spells as a Saint arrived a week later when his last second drop-goal earned victory over Salford, but his eye injury at Leeds contributed to a narrow 24-22 defeat a week later. Saints were still infuriatingly inconsistent and very uncertain of a playoff place.

Three wins in a row over Hull FC (19-12), Catalans Dragons (46-28) and away at Wakefield Trinity (41-16) in the Super 8s stage righted the Saints ship. That Wakefield win was only Saints second on the road in the whole of 2017 and saw them sneak into the top four, where they were heartbreakingly beaten by Luke Gale’s golden point for the Tigers. Seconds earlier it had looked like Ryan Morgan’s try had sealed what would have been a quite stunning Grand Final appearance.

The confidence instilled in the side by that narrow miss, plus the addition of Ben Barba after some very public Magic Weekend negotiations, saw Saints ride roughshod over the competition throughout most of 2018 as they carried off the League Leaders Shield with some ease. Yet the semi-finals once again proved the end of the road as they went down 18-13 to Warrington. Still, the smile was back on the faces of the fans under Holbrook’s more enterprising, considerably more consistent brand of rugby league. As sad as it was to say farewell to one of the great names of the club’s history, the night Keiron Cunningham failed to beat Huddersfield at home despite his side taking a 14-point lead has proved fairly vital in turning around the club’s fortunes.