5 Talking Points From Catalans Dragons 18 Saints 10

And So It Ends


All good things come to an end. Great books, classic films, relationships, your first pint on a night out. Heck, even life itself comes to a conclusion at some point. Only really rubbish things like the Brexit debate and my wait for Liverpool to win another title go on forever. Saints unbeaten run is no exception to this rule as they went down 18-10 to Catalans Dragons in Perpignan.

It wasn’t supposed to happen so soon, mind. Catalans came into this one on the back of a 42-0 towelling at comedy club Wigan while also managing to lose 46-0 at home to Salford earlier in the season. A Saints side which had opened the season with eight wins in a row was fancied to continue their hot streak against the inconsistent French outfit. Yet Steve McNamara’s side were full value for their win as a Saints side shorn of it’s starting halfbacks wilted in the changeable Perpignan weather.

It’s a loss that knocks Saints off the top of the BetFred Super League table. Justin Holbrook’s side have been ousted by Warrington who they face next week. That game now takes on extra significance. A Warrington win would open up a two-point gap at the top for Steve Price’s side, making Saints perfect start seem just a distant memory. However if Saints can get back on the horse with a win they will regain control of the race for the League Leaders Shield. It is not a crisis by any means, regardless of what the knee-jerkers on social media have told you. Blowing a 20-point lead against Castleford, you might call it a Tiger Roll, in the week that one of your players gets a drug suspension and in which you still haven’t been able to get a straight, honest answer out of the man you told everyone would be your coach next year. That’s a crisis.



A Game Of Two Halfbacks


Saints were already going into this one without the injured Theo Fages when they were dealt a further blow with the news that Jonny Lomax would be missing through illness. It meant that the returning Danny Richardson who has played all of his rugby in 2019 so far in the Championship with Leigh Centurions would be partnered by 18-year-old Jack Welsby in Saints creative department. Add in conditions that might best be described on Grand National weekend as ‘heavy’ and you have a recipe for a blip that will be made to look like a disaster by those people who never go to games because they’ve been telling you for years that Saints are shit.

The reality is that it’s difficult to get too down on the performance of either Richardson or Welsby. In fact the former started the game brilliantly, placing a measured kick into the in-goal from which Dominique Peyroux notched his fifth try of the season. But Richardson is still not ready to lead the team around the field with anything like authority. He is himself still too prone to taking the wrong option on the crucial last plays to command the full attention of his team-mates. He needs an old head alongside him. Similarly, Welsby is far too inexperienced to fill the shoes of Lomax without an authoritative voice alongside him. He struggled to get into the game for large parts and his task was made even more difficult by the boggy pitch which took away a lot of Saints usual zip in attack.

How Lomax would have handled the wet, chilly conditions is one of life’s un-knowables but his greater experience would likely have been valuable. With such a key player missing the selection of Welsby at stand-off has to be questionable. This was always going to be a game in which halfback play was going to make a huge difference. A tactical battle in which wise heads would be a major asset. The evidence of last week’s win over Hull KR, when Fages left the action midway through the first half, suggested that Joseph Paulo might have been a safer pair of hands at six. Yet perhaps this short term pain will offer long term gain for Saints young halves. They’ll be better for the experience.

One aspect of Richardson’s performance was particularly baffling. While out of the side his prowess as a goal-kicker has been talked up to the point where you’d think he makes Hazel El-Masri look like Diana Ross at the USA ‘94 opening ceremony. In reality Richardson made about 75% of his goal attempts during his run in the side last season. That still makes him a more reliable option than Lachlan Coote. We are told that Coote is a reluctant goal-kicker yet it was he who was lining up the pot-shots whenever they presented themselves. To be fair Coote only missed one from a meagre two attempts, but there will be those who insist that Richardson would have landed both and so given Saints a realistic chance of taking the game into extra time when they were throwing the ball around like it was the QPR job late on. We’ll never know if it would have made a difference but it seems reasonable to suggest that if Richardson is the most prolific goal-kicker on the field then he should get the job.



Was Fouad Yaha’s Try A Fair One?


Anyone who knows the definitive answer to this one has better eyes than me. The Dragons winger raced Tommy Makinson to a rolling ball in the Saints in-goal area and was deemed by video referee Tom Grant to have touched down first. Video replays seemed inconclusive, so the deciding factor was the fact that referee Robert Hicks had sent it up for review as a try. Certainly there was not sufficient evidence to disprove Hicks’ first impression so a try was rightly given.

Yet it’s only right if you accept the limitations of the system. A referee who has to make a tentative call under the present arrangements can sometimes be offering not much more than a guess. The touch judge clearly wasn’t convinced either. On a different day a different referee could quite conceivably have made a different call. I’d stop short of saying that Saints were hard done by but it does highlight what many critics of video referee suspect, which is that even with technology it is impossible to get every decision 100% correct.

Though he endured a slightly torrid time defensively with all three Dragons tries originating from kicks to his corner, Makinson should be congratulated on the occasion of his 100th Super League try. If Makinson played on the left wing, where Saints still seem to direct most of their best attacking play, he’d probably have 200. Despite the addition of Kevin Naiqama and the improved form of Peyroux Saints still look a little unbalanced in attack. Naiqama gets little quality ball, and you have to at least question whether he is bringing more to the team at this moment in time than Ryan Morgan did before him,



Are The Dragons A Bad Match-Up For Saints?


Some people believe there is such a thing as bogey sides. Those teams that despite your superiority you just have trouble with. Sometimes that might be because previous bad results against a particular team get inside the heads of players, coaches and fans alike, and sometimes it’s about styles. In boxing they say styles make fights, the idea being that a fighter with greater talent might lose to one who can figure him out tactically and so present problems that he’s not so good at dealing with. This thought crossed my mind watching Saints get beaten up by the Dragons pack for the second time in recent memory,

Do you remember the Challenge Cup semi-Final at Bolton back in August? Saints fans had cheered when the name of Catalans Dragons came out of the hat in the draw for that stage of last year’s competition, but there wasn’t too much cheering among us when we found ourselves 20+ points down before half-time. A position from which we never recovered as Wembley dreams turned to a pint in the pub down the road. Saints were without Alex Walmsley on that occasion and for want of a better description they were bullied by the Catalans side throughout. There was a touch of deja-vu about this defeat as the game developed into a forward battle brought on by the conditions. Much of the game was played down the middle third of the field and while Saints pack stood up better to the physical challenge this time around they still made numerous errors in collision which contributed heavily to their undoing.



Defeat Sets Up A Huge Game Next Week


We’ve touched on the fact that Warrington visit Saints next week with the league leadership on the line. That game now represents a huge test of Saints character, especially that of Richardson. Fages has already been ruled out with his hip problem so it is highly likely that last year’s Super League Dream Team scrum half will get another shot. He’ll be helped by the return of Lomax who should be over his illness by then but he still has it all to do to prove that he can be the man to secure the seven jersey long term once Fages regains fitness. He’s done it before, with one virtuoso performance at Warrington from 2018 springing readily to mind. But this defeat will have done little for a player who seems to sink or swim according to his confidence levels.

There are key battles all over the field when Wire come to town. Coote vs Stefan Ratchford in the fullback roles, Josh Charnley and Tom Lineham up against Makinson and Regan Grace on the wings, and Saints formidable front three of Walmsley, James Roby and Luke Thompson should be affronted enough to want to put one over on their Wolves counterparts Chris Hill, Daryl Clarke and Mike Cooper. Dominique Peyroux can be compared form-wise to anyone this year and so won’t be cowed by Ben Currie, while Jack Hughes’ improvement has seen him gain international recognition and with it the confidence to take on the Zeb Taias of this world. But it is in the halves where Saints have to shine against the currently rampant Blake Austin and the highly-rated Declan Patton. Whoever wins that battle could find themselves looking down on the rest of Super League by around 10.00 on Friday night.


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