Grand Final 2019 - Verdict

We’ve paid our dues. Time after time. We’ve done our sentence, but committed no crime. It’s been no bed of roses. No pleasure cruise. But we are the champions, my friend.

All of which Queenly sentiments are another way of telling you that the monkey has been catapulted from the back of the Saints. The bottlers and chokers that everyone said couldn’t win big games finally brought one home as Justin Holbrook’s side ran out 23-6 winners over Ian Watson’s Salford outfit. It is a sixth Super League Grand Final win for Saints and a seventh title since the summer competition started in 1996. Saints have now won more Grand Finals than they have lost, which when you consider that they lost five in a row from 2007-2011 is a pretty firm indicator of the regularity with which they reach Old Trafford.

This one arrives after a five-year lean period. Seven of the 17 on duty that day made it through to Holbrook’s selection in 2019 with two more on the Salford side in the shape of Josh Jones and Mark Flanagan. For Saints all of Tommy Makinson, Mark Percival, Alex Walmsley, Luke Thompson, James Roby, Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook and Kyle Amor were part of the side both here and on the day when Ben Flower’s thuggery, Matty Smith’s wayward goal-kicking and Makinson’s ability to sniff out a try from nothing secured a 14-6 win over the old enemy of Wigan.

It was a different opponent and a different type of victory this time. Saints were almost totally dominant in the first 30 minutes. Right from the moment that Lee Mossop coughed up possession in Salford’s first set Saints swarmed all over their opponents. When they turned that pressure into possession near the opponents’ goal-line there appeared to be a definite and deliberate policy of running the ball on the last tackle. Old Trafford has unusually small in-goal areas making it hard not to kick the ball dead. To do so under the current rules results in a seven-tackle set so it made sense to turn the ball over on the last if necessary and back the defence. Withered cynics might have been wondering whether the ploy spoke of a lack of faith in the short kicking game of Lachlan Coote and Theo Fages but I prefer the positive spin. Holbrook knew he had the best defensive team in the competition. Why not back that defence to help win the territorial battle? Especially if it means sparing them the need to make that extra tackle that comes from a ball having been kicked dead.

It took 15 minutes for Saints’ early dominance to translate into points. Roby shot out of dummy half to feed Walmsley. With everyone expecting the big prop to try to barge his own way towards the line Walmsley surprised everyone with a beautifully timed deft pass to Morgan Knowles which took George Griffin out of the game and allowed the young Welshman to open the scoring. Robert Hicks was thankfully not on hand to spoil Knowles’ moment this time. Coote’s kicking was a feature of his excellent all-round display and the first of his five goals gave Saints a 6-0 lead.

Eight minutes later Saints second try was a thing of real beauty. Ken Sio had fumbled a cross-field kick and from the resultant scrum Fages peeled away to the short side and looked certain to receive the ball from Roby with a good chance to score. Instead Roby performed a stunning pirouette to plant a wonderful reverse pass straight on to the chest of Zeb Taia running a great line inside Roby. It was such a well designed play, no doubt straight from the training ground judging from the reaction of Holbrook and his assistant Richard Marshall. There were dissenters claiming that Fages was offside having not retreated to the back of the scrum but referee Chris Kendall and his touch judges were happy. Coote’s second conversion made it 12-0 to Saints.

That was one of several allegedly scandalous decisions in what some knicker-wetting and frankly desperate fans of rival clubs called the worst refereeing performance they had ever seen. That is about as hysterical as it gets and for us should do nothing to detract from the fact that the best team in 2019 has tootled off with the title. I’ll address some of the more debatable calls along the way but even if Kendall had turned up with a red vee tattooed on his face Saints would still be worthy and deserving champions. That we were here at all is down to a sportingly perverse, media driven system which exists only to wring much needed cash out of supporters and sate the appetite for manufactured drama of the broadcaster. Doubt about Saints as a credible champion team left the building when they won 26 of their 29 regular season games and topped the table by a record 16 points. Playoffs look silly when a team is this dominant.

Perhaps the most squeal-inducing decision arrived just four minutes after Taia’s try. Salford had been caught in the RL equivalent of a typhoon in that first 25 minutes but thought they were on the board when Tui Lolohea went over. However the try was ruled out by Kendall for obstruction. Now, I hate the modern interpretation of the obstruction rule in RL as much as the next fan but this was textbook obstruction and would always have been interpreted that way. The TV replay clearly showed that Lolohea stopped dead behind Logan Tomkins, creating just enough of a shield from the tacklers to find the space to score. You just can’t do that and that’s not Kendall’s fault. Sure, he could have been more thorough and referred it to video referee Ben Thaler. We all remember what happened to Hicks at Wembley when he had the temerity to back his own judgement. The difference here is that the evidence supported the on-field call. Had it been handed on to Thaler he could not have justified overturning the decision.

The truth that has been somewhat glossed over in all that is that Lolohea actually wasted a great chance to score. If he had shifted the ball left to Jones they had numbers on that edge. In turning back inside he hit all the defensive traffic and had to use Tomkins illegally to plot a route through. Yet if anyone thought Salford heads would drop after that disappointment, that Watson’s side would fade away quietly, they were in for a jolt. Salford were much the better side in the last 15 minutes of the first half and got some reward for that shortly after Lolohea’s disallowed effort.

Again the former Leeds stand off was involved, switching the play back left towards the short side and Jackson Hastings. The Wigan-bound half was fantastic in his final appearance for the Salford club and he used the space well to send fellow future-pie Jake Bibby in for the score. Krisnan Inu gaoled to send Salford in at half-time with a reasonable sniff of glory. They trailed by just six points at 12-6. The next score would be decisive, you felt.

Before it arrived there was a moment of unwanted drama for Saints as Makinson was slow to get up after running into Lolohea and Kris Welham. For a while there it looked as if Makinson may not get up unaided much less continue. He was looking like Rod Tidwell in Jerry Maguire. It turned out that he had dislocated his shoulder and experienced a bit of trouble getting it to return to its intended location. Which makes the fact that he not only got up and played the last 38 minutes with one good arm but also landed a game-sealing drop-goal - the first drop-goal of his career - all the more remarkable.

The bitter nay-sayers have suggested it was an unnecessary bit of trolling (to use modern parlance) given that there were only two minutes left at the time and Saints were already 22-6 to the good. But we should not concern ourselves with such talk. I am certain the rest of the RL community will come around to that way of thinking when the clip is being replayed on Sky Sports Grand Final Gold in years to come. A man with a potentially serious injury potting over the first one-pointer of his career to cap a Grand Final win is storybook stuff from where I am sitting. If anyone wishes to take issue with it they should direct their focus to Salford’s failure to target Makinson in defence. Watson has barely put a foot wrong in what has been a sensational season for him and his team but I feel he missed a trick there. With a bit more thought Salford should have been able to force Holbrook into withdrawing Makinson and so force a tactical reshuffle. If that sounds brutal and harsh just remember it is the Grand Final. Do or die. You have to be ruthless and Salford were not in that regard. If a Salford player had been similarly stricken we would have been screaming for someone in a Saints shirt to run straight at them with as much force as possible.

Those same naysayers will point to a few incidents which took place over the next 10 minutes or to back up their criticisms of Kendall and try to take credit away from Saints. Just a minute after the collective and audible exhale let out by the crowd as Makinson was resurrected, concerns turned to Jack Ashworth. The prop went in heavily on Inu who was in no hurry to get up and get on with it. Ashworth hadn’t used his arms very much in making the tackle, and first contact was suspiciously high. As Inu had fallen Ashworth had toppled forwards on to him, effecting a head movement which was reminiscent of Alan Pardew’s method of dealing with Hull City’s David Meyler in 2014 when the human dance-gif was manager of Newcastle United. Kendall saw no intent, which is perhaps fortunate for Ashworth but hardly the greatest officiating cock-up since the Hand Of God as it was painted by some later. My only issue with it is that Ashworth was the fourth man in on that tackle which is teetering awfully close to overkill. When Wigan send four men into the tackle and use the head to ‘get in tight’ (to use Kendall’s explanation) I slaughter them for shithousing. We paint the image that our players don’t resort to that sort of chicanery so I’m not going to defend it here.

Inconsistencies are one of the fans’ biggest bug-bears so anyone not of a Saints persuasion would have been riled by two other calls during that spell that went in Saints favour. First George Griffin was penalised for a ball steal during a challenge on Coote, while moments later a very similar looking incident saw former Saint Adam Walker whistled for a knock-on despite the dishonourable intentions of Thompson. Yet even these were not terrible decisions. Both could have gone either way and you could make a case for the referee just the same. The problem is that at the moment the rules around what constitutes a ball steal and/or a knock-on at the play-the-ball are still a lottery. Some you get and some you don’t and it was ever thus. Nothing really to see here for the conspiracy theorists.

It is somewhat ironic given Saints general aversion to short-kicking that the try that put them firmly in command and arguably saw off Salford’s resistance came via exactly that route. Percival is often accused by other members of the squad of being a couple of stops short of barking. Game intelligence is not his strength, let’s say. So who else but he would disregard the game plan by dabbing a little kick in-goal at the end of what looked like an otherwise fruitless sideways jaunt across the defensive line? But he knows something the rest of us don’t, because it was an inch-perfect piece of execution allowing him to race past a static line to touch down. The nearest threat to Percival’s ambition to get to the ball first was Amor. The desire and then combined delight etched on the faces of the pair as they successfully hunted the ball down typified Saints under Holbrook. Having the most talented players isn’t enough. You have to work harder than everybody else too. A third Coote conversion of the night put Saints 18-6 up with half an hour to play. Within touching distance of putting the exclamation mark on their season’s work.

There were a couple more big calls that Kendall had to make which, had they gone the way some demanded, could have hauled Salford back into something like contention. Naiqama’s tackle on Inu was armless but also harmless. It should have been a penalty to Salford but there was no contact with the head and therefore no reason for Kendall to get all card-y about it. Nor was there much call for the furore when Dodson was deemed to have knocked on close to the Saints line soon after. Probably a penalty for interference by Aaron Smith who seemed to be holding Dudson as he tried to regain his feet. A lost opportunity for Watson’s side but hardly enough to bridge the gap between the two sides. As Hastings was honest enough to say in his post-match interview with same-as-Angela-but-a-bit-younger Jenna Brooks these were not game changing decisions. They didn’t help Salford who might have had a bit more luck on the night, but the best team are champions.

By the time of the Dudson incident he had already clonked Thompson around the neck in front of the Salford sticks to put them in a 20-6 hole, while there was little doubt that Griffin was offside when he played at a ball knocked forward by Niall Evalds following a Fages bomb. Coote again obliged and Saints led by 16 points at 22-6. There would have been a nice symmetry (for nerds anyway) about winning the Grand Final by 16 points having topped the league by 16 at the end of the regular season. But Makinson wasn’t having any of that as he had the last word for himself with that audacious one-pointer.

We’ve taken our bows and our curtain calls. We are the champions, my friend.