5 Talking Points From Saints 32 Salford Red Devils 30

The Two Faces Of Lachlan Coote

Lachlan Coote has been a superb addition to the Saints squad for 2019. Unheralded at North Queensland Cowboys the Scottish international has consistently produced match-winning performances in the red vee. He arguably came up with another one here in this thrilling come-from-behind win over a more than handy Salford Red Devils side. Coote scored a hat-trick of tries, taking his tally for his first season in Super League to eight. It was enough to earn him 51% of the vote to win the WA12 Rugby League Show Man Of The Match Award.

Yet it was a performance which showed us two sides of Coote. Not everything went swimmingly for him. It’s been well documented that he could improve his goal-kicking. He made a respectable four out of six conversions here and it could have been even better. It is very arguable that his first miss of the evening when trying to convert his opening try created so spectacularly by Regan Grace’s break looked like a tough call. Television replays seemed to show that the ball might just have sneaked the right side of the upright but it was nevertheless waved away by the touch judges.

Yet it wasn’t his goal-kicking that was falling short against Ian Watson’s side. He came up with three errors, most notably a botched attempt to clean up a Salford grubber kick which almost led to Krisnan Inu scoring and in fact did produce the repeat set from which Derrell Olpherts got over to put Salford ahead at half-time. Earlier, Coote’s weak attempt at a kick close to the Salford line was seized upon by Inu who held off two tacklers to send Niall Evalds on an 80-metre surge to the line. A pass to Zeb Taia looked the better option as for once Coote’s normally flawless decision making abilities let him down.

Yet as well as his three tries and another two assists (Coote is fourth in the league in this category with 13) the Saints fullback ran for 188 metres on 22 carries and finished the night with 20 of Saints’ 32 points. He might be the reason we’re top of the league this season but he had a bit of a mixed night.

Was Zeb Taia Lucky?

Considering the way this one ended (which we’ll get to) there has been a lot of talk about refereeing, video refereeing and how decisions are arrived at. What has gone somewhat under the radar because of the saga around James Bentley’s late try is the question of whether Zeb Taia could have found himself taking a rest of 10 minutes or longer had referee Scott Mikalauskas taken a dimmer view of a challenge on Joey Lussick.

Saints were still trailing by two points at 18-16 early in the second half when they were caught out by Robert Lui’s inside ball to the Salford hooker. All the defenders were going in the wrong direction having been expecting Lui to either drive the ball into a tackle or continue to shift it out to the right edge towards the dangerous Inu and Olpherts. As a consequence of Lui’s switch of play Taia was late to the party and could only offer a desperate swinging arm into Lussick’s head. It took a while for Lussick to clear his head which not only allowed Saints time to set their defence - albeit to face a fresh set of tackles from the resultant penalty - but also the lack of any further punishment for Taia kept us on an even keel in terms of numbers. It would not have been ideal to go a man down against a Salford side already with a slight advantage on the scoreboard and with their tails up. Yet to the letter of the law it probably should have been a sin-bin.

It may have been the most important non-call of the night.

Is Walmsley Carrying The Pack?

Saints went into this one without Luke Thompson who has been missing since the Easter Monday thrashing of Hull FC, but also without James Roby who had another slight niggle. The skipper had not looked at his best in the Challenge Cup win over Huddersfield Giants last week and was replaced again by Aaron Smith. Nothing against Smith who is a fine young prospect or indeed against Matty Lees who has been deputising well for Thompson but those absences constitute the loss of two thirds of the best front row in world rugby league. Any side would suffer some sort of drop off with those sort of losses but thankfully Saints still have Alex Walmsley.

It’s been noted that Saints played only in short spells against Ian Watson’s men. Firstly the opening 15 minutes saw Coote capitalise on bits of magic from Grace and Theo Fages before the latter put Tommy Makinson away down the right for the first of his two scores. Then after conceding five unanswered tries Saints put together another purple patch late on, Coote taking Taia’s batted pass to complete his hat-trick before laying on Makinson for his second and Bentley for the all-important, controversial final score two minutes from the end.

It’s no coincidence perhaps that these two dizzying, effectively match-defining spells occurred with Walmsley on the field while much of the Lui-inspired carnage at the other end took place when the big prop was taking a break. Walmsley’s 155 metres was more than any other Saints forward managed on a night when the backs did much of the damage. The only other Saints forward to top 100 metres was Dominique Peyroux and if he had stepped back on the inside one more time, thus killing any ball movement towards Makinson and Adam Swift I was thinking of going on to the field with a shepherd’s hook of my own with which to drag the second rower off. He’s been brilliant this year but he has been so by running direct and getting the ball to his centre quickly. Perhaps the unexpected absence of Kevin Naiqama which had forced Makinson off the wing and into the centre position was playing on Peyroux’s mind. Naiqama has been in great form in recent weeks and seemed badly missed.

Walmsley also made 22 tackles missing just one and, perhaps crucially, had no errors blotting the copybook. It was a mature performance from Walmsley even though he makes it look kind of chaotic, Thompson is a few weeks away from fitness and with doubts lingering around Roby ahead of this week’s Magic Weekend clash with Castleford at Anfield there is a greater emphasis on Walmsley than perhaps at any time during his Saints career. Cas have men like Grant Millington and Jesse Sene-Lefao back to full fitness and with Liam Watts among the league’s best props in 2019 Walmsley is going to be a huge key to Saints’ success or otherwise. Is it too much to ask of him?

Lui Runs The Salford Show

Last time Robert Lui did anything of note on St Helens soil it didn’t end well. Indeed this result stretches Salford’s winless run in the town to 36 matches spanning 39 years. The got close in 2017 but, having led 24-8 late in the game, Salford were pegged back to 24-24 by three Saints tries in eight minutes. Worse was to come for them as in his haste to win the game and not settle for the point that both teams would have received before these less enlightened days of golden point extra time, Lui’s ill-advised chip over the top was plucked out of the air by Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook who set up Matty Smith for an incredible 40-metre game-winning drop-goal.

Lui’s luck ran out here too but not before he had been largely responsible for giving Saints an almighty fright. Along with the excellent Jackson Hastings at halfback and the destructive Inu at centre Lui ran the show. He scored one try, made another, made three clean breaks and busted out of 11 tackles, finishing with 124 metres to his name. With the boot he peppered Saints all night with 10 kicks in general play and five attacking dabs. If he and Hastings, who made 115 metres of his own on 20 carries and had one assist, played like this every week Salford would be a shoe-in for the play-offs. Which could mean another thriller like this one.

Bentley Benefits From Flawed System

I’m just going to come out and say it. There is no way that Bentley grounded the ball correctly for the winning try. Not by any serious definition of control and downward pressure. Having taken Coote’s pass in a frantic ending, Bentley did superbly to burrow over from close range with defenders hanging off every available body part. The replays seemed to show a slight loss of control just before the try-line, quickly disguised by Bentley as he re-gathered in the in-goal area.

It looks a poor decision, prompting all manner of insults and conspiracy theories from opposition fans driven quite mad by their industrial levels of fume. But it’s not really fair to blame either Mikalauskas or video referee James Child. Mikalauskas could not have been sure and so was 100% correct to send the incident up to Child for further analysis. That’s what it’s there for after all. If you can’t accept that and you want Mikalauskas to make the call then what you want is the abolition of the video refereeing system. I wouldn’t disagree with that policy but as things stand Mikalauskas had nowhere to go.

Nor did Child who is given a bum steer by the process itself. It forces the on-field referee to effectively take a guess at what might have happened at which point it is up to the video referee to find 100% proof, indisputable evidence, that the referee’s call is wrong. If he cannot do that then the protocol says that he should not overturn the decision. That’s a pretty high burden of proof for the video referee and it is understandable that Child did not feel he could be 100% certain that Mikalauskas had made an error.

Without the need for that indisputable evidence, that burden of proof, it is just possible and even quite likely that Child would have been unconvinced by Bentley’s grounding and made a different decision. It’s gone our way this time but I’m sure we’d all feel better if going forward the video referee can be free to make his own judgement instead of having to take into account what the on-field referee has given from his often spectacularly poor viewpoint.