Warrington Wolves 19 Saints 0 - Review

Did you hear that noise? That large crashing noise? That was us coming back down to earth with a massive, chastening, zero-shaped bump. A week that started badly with the news that Luke Thompson would be taking his world class prop forward derrière to Canterbury Bulldogs at the end of the season ended with this humbling at the Halliwell Jones Stadium. The team’s dominance of 2019 felt a long way off. Like a distant memory that in your less lucid moments you start to doubt really ever happened at all. Saints were always going to miss Justin Holbrook but who knew that the effects would be felt so strongly and so soon?

There are mitigating circumstances in this one for Holbrook’s replacement, Kristian Woolf. He was already without Lachlan Coote, Tommy Makinson, James Roby and Morgan Knowles when the late withdrawal of Alex Walmsley dealt Saints an unexpected and fairly savage blow. Walmsley pulled a calf muscle during the pre-game warm-up. Matty Lees stepped up from the bench to start the game and Joe Batchelor came into the 17 having initially been one of the four members of the original 21-man squad named on Tuesday to be left out. Another of those was Knowles who despite being recalled into the squad by Woolf was not risked.

Yet injuries alone don’t explain this Saints performance. Nobody would suggest it is easy to play against one of your main title rivals without five international players, and when you lose a sixth in the shape of Mark Percival a minute into the second half with your side already 13-0 down you might be forgiven for thinking it’s just not your day. But consider this Saints 13 which started the 30-12 victory over the same opponent at the same venue in August last year, just six months ago;

Welsby, Makinson, Naiqama, Costello, Grace, Lomax, Richardson, Lees, Smith, Thompson, Peyroux, Taia, McCarthy-Scarsbrook.

The bench was Paulo, Amor, Ashworth, Bentley. So no Coote that day. No Percival, no Walmsley, no Theo Fages, no Roby and no Knowles. Yet still they were good enough to win. Perhaps if you have to play without half a dozen stars often enough you have to accept that you are going to lose some games. But August’s win shows that it is not a certainty that you will lose on any given day in those circumstances. Saints have shown before what is possible. You just have to play an awful lot better than Woolf’s side did here.

The concession of 19 points doesn’t necessarily prevent a side from winning either. Especially not a Saints side which can score from anywhere on the field and who, as everyone with even a passing interest in the club knows, should absolutely never be written off. Saints’ defensive discipline let them down consistently. They conceded 10 penalties, the majority of which were for interference at the play-the-ball. Woolf has brought with him a worrying focus on wrestling in the tackle. It’s not really our way. That’s how the other lot play the game. Along with carelessness in possession that indiscipline invited more pressure on to Saints to the extent that they missed 39 tackles. Compare that with only 11 missed in last week’s 48-8 home win over Salford.

Not only did Saints make 12 handling errors (twice as many as against Salford) but when they did hang on to the ball they still didn’t look much like scoring. Saints were shut out on the scoreboard for the first time since a 25-0 beating at Wigan in 2016. That’s pre-Holbrook, a time when Saints’ approach to points-scoring was to shove the ball up Greg Richards’ jumper and instruct him to hit the ground as soon as possible to get a quick play-the-ball. After quick play-the-balls and repeat sets scoring tries was an afterthought in those days. There was a bit more ambition here but other than Kevin Naiqama failing to touch down in the corner thanks to Stefan Ratchford’s efforts and a late dart from Jonny Lomax for which he was not given the benefit of the doubt by the video referee there were few alarms for Steve Price’s side.

Part of that was down to a lack of go-forward. Lees is hailed by many as a natural and seamless replacement for the outgoing Thompson but when he was asked to step up here in place of the absent Walmsley he fell short. Forty-eight metres on 13 carries isn’t getting it done for a front-line prop. In addition to that lack of impact he lost his discipline too easily, lucky not to see a card when he swung an arm at Mike Cooper and then unsolicited, helped the Warrington prop remove his bandaging. Lees suffered a brutal knock to his nose early in the game and he has just returned from a serious intestinal injury. It is important to cut him some slack. But those who long for him to show that ‘bit of dog’ that is often spoken about with such fondness might want to reflect that if Lees doesn’t lengthen that fuse of his he will be less Luke Thompson and more Gareth Hock.

Elsewhere in the pack Jack Ashworth offered an apologetic 15 metres on just four carries. It will surprise nobody to learn that what go-forward there was came from Thompson who along with Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook and Zeb Taia made over 100 metres. Yet both of those last two made errors and gave away penalties. If I was to fill you in on the numbers on McCarthy-Scarsbrook where errors and penalties are concerned I’d just be accused of an agenda. I’ll spare you.

The first half hour had been a very tight affair. Saints always looked a bit chaotic in attack, completing only 53% of their sets in the first 40 minutes. They lacked cohesion, almost as if they were a bit spooked by what had happened with Walmsley and never really settled into any attacking rhythm. But defensively they were sound enough until a 10-minute spell before half-time when Daryl Clarke and Tom Lineham crossed for tries. Toby King knocked the ball so far forward that it nearly ended up in Widnes early in the set which led to Lineham’s try. But just because you’re on the wrong end of a poor decision doesn’t mean you have to concede a try. With the attack struggling to make any impression that period before the break was always going to be decisive. When Blake Austin dropped a goal on the half-time hooter to give Wire a 13-point cushion it pretty much settled the argument.

Losing Percival in the opening moments of that second half didn’t help and it wasn’t long before Josh Charnley took Matty Ashton’s pass to cross to give Warrington a 17-0 lead. By that point Saints’ centre partnership was Matty Costello and Dominique Peyroux, Naiqama having started on the wing to allow Jack Welsby to deputise for Coote at fullback. Unlike in the past they did not come close to adjusting to all of the changes they had to make. It was particularly sickening to see Charnley cross not just for his cherry and white association but also in light of the fact that he had earlier waved an imaginary yellow card at referee Chris Kendall after Percival had been penalised for holding down Anthony Gelling following a line break. I remember Lomax making a 10-minute gesture to a referee during one game last season by which this column was similarly unimpressed. Referees should take action against this kind of football-style cheating. Still, Charnley is a man who used to be known for waving around his imaginary wedding tackle so perhaps he’s actually progressing.

This Saints side comes up against Sydney Roosters in a fortnight in the World Club Challenge. On this sort of form they do not have a prayer. Woolf will be hoping that he can get some of his injured troops back on deck but even if he does their task looks big as we sit here today. It’s only one bad game, and it should be remembered that Saints once lost to both Wakefield and Harlequins (who?) in the weeks leading up to winning a world title. Yet there is no getting away from the fact that Woolf failed his first big test in charge of Saints. When they needed to do something different, to find answers to problems and chase the game in the second half ideas were few and far between. It’s too early to write Woolf off but he needs to show us something in the next fortnight, starting with a less than welcome trip to in-form Hull FC next time out on February 16.

Saints will have had nine clear days off by then during which there is lots to work on. Stopping the offload would be one key area. The Wolves made 16 offloads, effectively forcing Saints to do their defensive work again on those occasions. As Lomax mentioned in his post-match interview every defensive set of six became a set of 10 because of Wire’s ability to get the ball away in the tackle. By contrast Saints managed just eight offloads. That’s not quite the stuff of Greg Richards’ jumper but nor is it likely to break down the defence of a Warrington side playing as well as they have since they ruined our day out at Wembley.

The best thing that Saints and Woolf can do is park this performance and result. They cannot let it affect their confidence. It’s a long old season. If Saints win at Old Trafford in October having failed to dominate the league in the way they did in 2019 the celebrations will be no less raucous. It is not a result which defines the season but it is one from which lessons must be learned if Woolf’s men are to avoid losing early ground domestically and more importantly for now, have any chance of being crowned world champions on February 22.