Golden Tries - Tommy Makinson v Hull FC 2017

A trip to Hull FC looks like a tough ask for Saints this weekend. They go in off the back of a chastening 19-0 loss at Warrington while the black and whites have started the season with impressive victories over Leeds Rhinos and Hull KR.

Yet we have faced these odds before. A week before these two sides met at the 2017 Magic Weekend in Newcastle Saints had been unceremoniously dumped out of the Challenge Cup by Castleford Tigers. Awaiting the arrival of new coach Justin Holbrook in the wake of Keiron Cunningham’s departure from the club Saints went down 53-10 to a Tigers side which would finish that season on top of the table but go on to lose the Grand Final to the Rhinos.

It was thought that Holbrook would have only a watching brief that day. Yet he must have said something to his new charges. Something, somewhere inspired a team which was in local parlance ‘on its arse’ to dish out a fearful 45-0 hammering of Lee Radford’s side. And this was a decent Hull side. Three months on from this embarrassment they would go on to beat Wigan at Wembley in the Challenge Cup Final to win it for the second year in succession.

Saints fans will be hoping that Tommy Makinson is fit to return to the line-up for this week’s visit to the KCom Stadium. The winger has been missing in the first two weeks of 2020 after injuring his shoulder in the 2019 Grand Final victory over Salford Red Devils. It was Makinson who provided the most memorable moment of that 2017 Magic Weekend win over FC, diffusing a cross-field kick before going on to score a length-of-the-field try that is up there with anything seen in Super League over the last decade or so.

We’ll get to Makinson’s try in due course but first a bit of background. Saints’ Challenge Cup pounding at Castleford was the rock bottom moment in a season that had gone terribly up until that day in May. With Cunningham into his second full season in charge since taking over from Nathan Brown at the end of the Grand Final-winning 2014 season Saints started solidly enough, taking a 6-4 win over Leeds Rhinos on a filthy opening night in early February. It is only over the last two seasons that Super League has seen fit to start ‘summer rugby’ before the January sales are out, but a February start still brought with it some less than tropical conditions.

Things went downhill from there for Cunningham and Saints, who lost their next three games. First they went down 24-16 at newly promoted Leigh Centurions before they were edged out 16-12 at home by Wakefield in one of the worst performances by a Saints team it has ever been my displeasure to witness. Seriously, this effort made last week’s outing at Warrington look like highlights from the glory days. It was perfectly turgid. Saints followed that up with a 24-14 loss at – you guessed it – Hull FC. Form picked up slightly with wins in Perpignan over Catalans Dragons and at home to Warrington but a 22-14 defeat at Salford followed by a 14-14 home draw with Huddersfield was the end of the road for Cunningham. Saints had let slip a 14-0 lead in that one, kicked to death by a briefly flickering Danny Brough. The search was on for a new coach, and it was eventually Holbrook who was identified and appointed. During the interim, the trio of club legend Sean Long, fellow assistant coach Jamahl Lolesi and academy supremo Derek Traynor guided Saints to wins over Castleford and Leigh, but there were further defeats to Wigan, Widnes and Warrington before that Challenge Cup mauling at The Jungle.

By contrast Hull FC had 10 wins on the board in all competitions by the time of the Magic Weekend. They opened with a 12-8 win over Wakefield which didn’t promise too much and when they went down 16-14 at home to Catalans Dragons a week later there was barely a shrug from the rugby league world. Same old Hull. Yet a run of four consecutive wins including that 24-14 success over Saints in March was halted only by a 22-22 draw at Warrington. They still had draws in those days before the need to manufacture a winner took over and Golden Point was introduced in 2019. Defeats by Salford and Leeds followed, in which FC conceded over 50 points in each. Yet by the time of their Magic Weekend meeting with Saints FC had gone on another winning run, despatching, Leigh, Castleford, Warrington and Widnes in Super League and avenging that early season loss to Catalans Dragons by dumping the French side out of the Challenge Cup by the ludicrous score-line of 62-0.

So the teams arrived in Newcastle having had massively varying fortunes. A team that had just gone down 53-10 at Castleford was not fancied to make much of an impression on one who had just ran in more than 60 points against the Dragons, new coach or not. Most Saints fans travelled north east hoping to see some signs of improvement not just in results but in the style of play. Even when Saints had won under Cunningham it had often been sleepy stuff. Going through the processes. Completing sets. Applying pressure. Staying in the grind. The flair and flourish that had been at the heart of Saints culture for as long as most of us could remember was beginning to seem like a thing of the past.

So it was all the more surprising then when Saints raced into a 29-0 lead. There was evidence of their more conservative style in the way they went about that with two of their first three tries coming as a result of Matty Smith kicks. Ryan Morgan and Morgan Knowles were the beneficiaries adding to Alex Walmsley’s opening score of the game. Smith was involved again in Saints next nudge of the scoreboard operator, dropping a goal to send his side in to half-time with a fairly mystifying 19-0 lead. Walmsley added his second just after the break and when Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook also crossed the result was just about beyond doubt. A performance like this just needed a little decoration to remember it by. A little signature. Enter Makinson.

Marc Sneyd had tried to fool the Saints defence with a little cross-field chip from just inside the Saints half. Makinson, playing at fullback rather than his customary wing position, was wise to it and plucked it out of the air nonchalantly before beginning one of those winding runs across the pitch that he is known for. This habit can frustrate if he doesn’t find the gap in the defensive line that he is looking for, but on this occasion he found it and then some. As he neared the left hand touchline he was met by Carlos Tuimavave. It seemed as though the Hull FC man would wrap Makinson up but the then 25-year-old showed great strength to put Tuimavave on his backside and continue his run.

Next to try his hand at stopping Makinson was Sika Manu, but he was already behind the play and was done for pace, leaving only Albert Kelly between Makinson and clear daylight ahead. Makinson eluded Kelly with a step to his right before soaring down the field towards the FC try-line. FC forward Chris Green set off in pursuit but was hopelessly outpaced. The black and whites’ last hope of stopping Makinson’s rampage to the line was Danny Houghton, a man who would run a million miles to make a tackle no matter the circumstances. It looked as though he had run a significant distance to get within touching distance of Makinson. He desperately grabbed the arm of Makinson but managed only to slow him down as the Saints man pirouetted out of Houghton’s clutches. Staggering having had his momentum slowed, Makinson bounced back off the floor to plunge over just before the recovering Green could make contact and complete the tackle.

A couple of Regan Grace tries rounded off the 45-0 rout of Radford’s side. More than anything, this result was a springboard for Saints to begin their journey back not only into contention, losing to a Golden-Point drop-goal in the playoff semi-final at Castleford later that season, but towards dominance as they picked up League Leaders Shields in both of Holbrook’s full seasons in charge. The 2019 Grand Final ensured his Saints legacy as he moved on to Gold Coast Titans in the NRL.

With the doom merchants out in force following the abject defeat at Warrington last time out, perhaps the return of Makinson could spark something similar for the Kristian Woolf era just as it did against Hull FC at the start of the Holbrook tenure.