5 Talking Points From Saints 38 Warrington Wolves 12

What A Difference A Week Makes

There seemed good reason to be nervous ahead of the visit of Warrington. Saints has put in a performance against Catalans in Perpignan that was so stale and stodgy that if it were an episode of Game Of Thrones it would have needed the deaths of at least three central characters to make it watchable. By contrast Warrington had been flying like Danaerys on the back of one of her dragons. They took over at the top of the table last week thanks to Saints’ defeat in France and the Wolves’ own 48-12 peppering of a London Broncos side morphing into the sort of relegation fodder we always suspected them to be. Like Saints, Warrington’s only loss coming into this one was against the Dragons of the rugby league variety, and that only by a single point in a performance that was far more compelling viewing than the one Saints served up.

Yet that was a side shorn of the talents of Jonny Lomax. With Theo Fages also out Saints had thrown in 18-year-old Jack Welsby last week to play alongside Danny Richardson in the halves. The latter was playing his first Super League game of the season too having lost his starting place to Fages at the start of the campaign. It was no surprise that the new combination struggled in Perpignan but Saints are a different proposition with Lomax among the cast members. He ran the show in the final stages of the first half after Mike Cooper was sun-binned for a careless high shot on Richardson. Lomax got over for a try in that crucial period in which Saints stretched an 8-6 advantage out to 20-6 at the break.

Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook had spent much of the previous night in the delivery room as his wife gave birth to twins, but he returned to the fold to put in a quite stunning cameo. The Londoner scored one try and came within inches of another almost immediately, before narrowly failing to exert downward pressure on the ball as it bobbled over the Warrington try-line early in the second half. Between them Lomax and McCarthy-Scarsbrook scored two tries, had one try assist, made 34 tackles and ran for 151 metres as Saints took control of a match that had been cagey early. Wire coach Steve Price admitted afterwards that Saints had been dominant, a lot of which was down to the return of these two key contributors.

Will Danny Keep The Halfback Role?

When injuring his hip in the win over Hull KR on March 29 Theo Fages was almost immediately ruled out of the games against Catalans and Warrington by coach Justin Holbrook. Yet the coach was also quick to point out that the injury does not require surgery and so hopes are high that Fages will be available for the Easter double-header. Saints go to Wigan for the second derby of the season on Friday (April 19) followed by a home clash with a Hull FC side currently displaying all the consistency of Boris Johnson’s Brexit columns. But will Holbrook change a winning team? Should he?

Richardson’s numbers aren’t startling by any means. He still plays too side-on, suffering from the old Luke Walshian phobia of running at the line to commit defenders and so make space for others. Fages is much better at this, largely because he could care less if somebody clocks him into next Wednesday. Richardson carried the ball just six times for 28 metres against the Wolves, not the kind of running threat you want from your half in games of this magnitude. Yet with six attacking kicks and nine more in general play, many of which turned Warrington around deep inside their own territory it is clear to see that Richardson has the edge on the Frenchman in that department. Since Lomax has no kicking game to speak of either the inclusion of Fages over Richardson would put a lot of extra responsibility on Lachlan Coote.

Defensively Richardson is a target for opponents. He missed five of his 18 tackle attempts against Wire which is not a great success rate. You can’t help but worry about how he might cope with Wigan’s formidable left edge of Oliver Gildart and Joe Burgess. It might not cost us given that Wigan are generally garbage despite those attacking threats. While Saints were winning this one the Lam Pies where slipping to a seventh league defeat in 10 outings as they lost 30-20 at Wakefield. Burgess scored a hat-trick even so. The threat is there and Holbrook must make a decision on whether Saints can defend well enough for Richardson’s defences lapses to be absorbed. They managed it well enough this week.

Sin Bin Kills Wire

There wasn’t much disputing the yellow card given to Cooper for a high tackle on Richardson around the half hour mark. He’d been unbalanced by Richardson’s change of direction as he shuffled along the defensive line and could only offer a desperate grab which clunked into the head of Saints’ young half. At that point Saints were leading 8-6 and arguably in the ascendancy but the removal of the England prop softened them up still further.

The ease with which McCarthy-Scarsbrook crashed through the gut of Warrington’s goal-line defence was evidence of that, as was the way in which Lomax was able to jig his way over shortly afterwards. Suddenly a two-point lead had become a 14-point buffer and from then on Saints never looked like losing. All those fears throughout the week of what Warrington’s potent attack might do to us became questions about just where Wire star Blake Austin was hiding. He’d scored Warrington’s early try, benefitting from some good fortune when Daryl Clark was adjudged to have lost the ball backwards in Lomax’s last-ditch tackle. Yet after that the Australian was fairly anonymous, ending the game with 19 carries for 72 metres at just 3.78 metres per carry. A lot of opportunities on the ball but no visible threat. He missed a Richardson-like four of his 18 tackle attempts and was required to kick for territory 10 times.

Once Cooper had returned the game had changed beyond redemption for Warrington. They scored first after half-time through Clark to reduce their arrears to eight at 20-12 but when Stefan Ratchford and Tom Lineham held a meeting instead of dealing with Coote’s snow-covered Sky-botherer to allow Matty Lees to crash over like Jon Snow riding into Kings Landing the game was over as a contest. Further tries followed from Regan Grace and Tommy Makinson followed, the former an eight-point play due to Lineham’s petulant late hit on Grace in the act of scoring, to give the final result a sheen that Saints’ dominance deserved. What would have happened had Cooper not been given to recklessness in the first half is something we’ll never know. But any chance Warrington had seemed to disappear with Cooper as he trudged off.

Naiqama and Grace Step Up

Adam Swift returned to fitness last week. He was also back in action, scoring twice while playing on dual registration at Leigh. In the wake of Saints’ dud of a performance in France it reopened the debate about whether he could again put pressure on Grace for a first team shirt. If not, and amid rumours of a loan move to Wakefield to fill in for the stricken Tom Johnstone, it could signal the end of a Saints stint that has seen Swift cross for a very respectable 93 tries in 137 appearances. When you compare it to Makinson’s 116 four-pointers in 211 games you can make a statistical case that Swift is elite.

Yet Grace’s fleeting but quite brilliant contribution here has put Swift further away from a recall. The Welshman only carried the ball seven times but he did so for 119 metres, a whopping average of 17 metres per carry. The bulk of these arrived during his breathtaking 75-metre dash to the line midway through the second half. Having held off the attentions of Josh Charnley and Jack Hughes Grace made a third Wiganer look ridiculous in the space of a few seconds, sitting Ratchford on his behind. The only contact made with Grace was the cowardly smack over his head offered by Lineham as Grace dove over to score. That cost Warrington an extra two points as Coote kicked his seventh goal from bang in front after landing his sixth with the original conversion. Incidentally, the Lachlan Coote song set to the tune of Oasis’ ‘She’s Electric’ is great but it does go on a bit. It could do with a second verse just to break up the monotony as Will Smith might have it. I’m working on this. It needs an extra line yet but how about;

‘He’s got a bald patch’
‘He always wins Man Of The Match’
‘James Roby’

No? Ok.

Another man whose position has been questioned of late is Kevin Naiqama. The Fijian came in for what was presumably a barrow-load of money as Ryan Morgan took the journey south for a loan spell with London Broncos. While few have called for a return for Morgan and it is has always been quite likely that we have seen the last of him at Saints, there were those wondering whether we had actually got ourselves an upgrade. Naiqama has struggled as much as anyone in that under-used right edge of Saints attack but had arguably his best game since arriving. He came inside looking for work early in the game when it was a bit of a struggle but as it opened up he gave Ryan Atkins a torrid time. Naiqama ran for 89 metres on 10 carries and had the energy to burst on to Coote’s excellent pass to set up Makinson for his second try in as many games. Naiqama also busted out of six tackles, but the defensive side of his game still needs work with four misses from 22 attempts. Like Richardson, he could come under pressure against Gildart and Burgess next week but unlike the Widnesian halfback he has done enough in this one to be certain of retaining his place.

Don’t You Wish It Mattered More?

In the build-up to this one both Saints and Warrington’s social media departments tried to out-naff each other with their promotion of the game. They should probably be congratulated given that their efforts contributed to a record crowd for a Saints v Warrington clash at the stupidly named stadium of over 17,000. Saints went with a clunkingly bad war pun on the name of their visitors while Wire inter-cut footage of Lineham being a good deal more useful than he was here with images of a worried looking dog. His tries from last year’s semi-final win over Saints were an odd choice given that Wire went on to lose the Grand Final to the knee-seekers of Wigan. To be fair there isn’t an extensive library of clips of Warrington getting the better of Saints so they had to go with what they had I guess.

Contemplating this, and the inevitable blowback that Warrington and their fans received following their team’s comprehensive defeat, I couldn’t help but wish that all this mattered a bit more. Normally this sort of discussion isn’t raised until September when it’s time to force a smile to pick up the League Leaders Shield, but I’m bringing it forward. Wouldn’t last night have been so much better if we still had a first past the post system to decide the identity of the champions? I’ve been looking at scores of....well.....scores and tables from yesteryear for the nostalgia pieces you can read on these pages (look out for a derby special this week) and they remind me of an era when every game really did count. To take one example, every game during the 1992-93 season when Saints lost the title to Wigan on points difference was a nerve-shredding affair. An 8-8 draw between the two on Good Friday that season was truly epic. But no, it isn’t that one that inspires this week’s blog down memory lane. I’m not revealing that just yet.

As good as beating Warrington is, and as much as it lays down a bit of a marker between the two sides hotly tipped to reach Old Trafford for the Grand Final, it doesn’t really matter. It won’t matter at all unless we win the Grand Final, even if it is the difference at the end of the regular season between finishing top of the table or not. It shouldn’t be that way. Surely there is a compromise to be found between rewarding consistency over the season and celebrating the winners of what is essentially an end of season playoff competition? The League Leaders Shield in its current form, with the lack of kudos that offers, is not that compromise.