Pack-Shuffling While We Wait For Action

After months of inactivity due the ongoing public health crisis Saints have made some significant recruitment moves in recent weeks.

First there was the sudden departure of Luke Thompson to Canterbury Bulldogs in the NRL which you can read about elsewhere on these pages. We are still waiting on the official confirmation of James Graham’s return to the club to temporarily fill the void left by Thompson. Graham’s current club St George-Illawarra Dragons formerly announced his departure earlier this week, paving the way for the scouse prop to finish 2020 and in all probability his career with Saints. Graham made 225 appearances for the club between 2003-2011. He won three Challenge Cup winners medals in that time, was a key member of the treble-winning side of 2006 under Daniel Anderson and was named Man Of Steel in 2008. Yet just as Saints prepared to move into the newly built Langtree Park for the 2012 season and following a trauma-inducing run of five consecutive Super League Grand Final defeats Graham chose to test himself in the the Australian competition with the Bulldogs. He moved on to the Dragons in 2018. If Is can be dotted and Ts crossed he should now get the opportunity to grace the turf at Saints still relatively new home, though whether there will be any fans there to witness it remains up in the air.

While we wait on Graham’s arrival in the front row there is activity in the back row department. First Zeb Taia announced that he will be leaving the club at the end of the 2020 season. Whenever that might be. Taia plans to return to Australia when this heavily interrupted campaign ends to continue what he calls ‘the next chapter’ in his life. Taia has made 95 appearances for Saints since becoming Kieron Cunningham’s last signing in March 2017 when he arrived from Gold Coast Titans. The deal saw Joe Greenwood move in the other direction and was met with no small amount of harrumphing from the fans. Cunningham’s record in recruitment had been less than stellar and Greenwood was prized as a hot prospect who had risen up through the club’s youth ranks. Cunningham was blamed for misusing Greenwood and forcing him to view his future elsewhere. At 32, Taia was not seen as a suitable replacement by many.

Perhaps because of that perception, unfair criticism has been a theme of Taia’s three-year spell at Saints. He has been outstanding in the left second row berth. He has twice made the top five in the league in offloads and has so often been the creative spark in the pack. Saints fans demand a flamboyant style even among the forwards and Taia has been a back rower in the very best traditions of the club. He has a languid style that might make the occasional error look like it has come about through carelessness or laziness, but that is an illusion. There have been few who have given more for the cause these last three seasons than the man who captained the Cook Islands at the 2013 World Cup and made the 2015 Super League Dream Team during his spell with Catalans Dragons.

Taia and the club itself have come a long way since the ignominy of an abject home defeat by Wakefield in his debut. He has formed a consistent second row partnership with Dominique Peyroux, another player who fans were not convinced about when he was brought in by Cunningham from New Zealand Warriors in 2016. Those who perceive Taia as anything less than a real grafter might also like to know that he has twice been in Super League’s top five metre makers and even in 2020, with Saints having endured a bumpy start before lockdown, you will find his name in the top 10 in that category.

Born in Australia, his Cook Islands heritage initially saw him represent New Zealand in the 2010 Anzac Day test against Australia. That was while he was with Newcastle Knights in the NRL having started his professional career with Parramatta Eels in 2006. He then moved to France in 2012, had a two-season stint with the Titans from 2016 before arriving in St Helens to begin the most successful phase of his club career. Taia has won two League Leaders Shields in his two full seasons with Saints and was a try-scorer in the 2019 Super League Grand Final defeat of Salford back in October. The only honour in the U.K. game that has eluded him is the Challenge Cup, though he did play in the Wembley defeat by Warrington last season. Taia will hopefully get one more crack at filling that gap in his CV if the authorities can figure out a way to get the competition up and running again post-Covid.

For all the positives around Taia and all the plaudits he is now rightfully receiving it is almost certainly the right time for him to move on. Taia will be 36 by the time this year’s re-scheduled Grand Final comes around. Although there are examples of players who have gone on beyond that age in Super League (Gareth Ellis and Steve Menzies spring immediately to mind) it is perhaps time to look to the future. That is why it is important that Saints have announced today that James Bentley has agreed a one-year extension to his contract. That ties him to the club until the end of the 2021 season. A few eyebrows have been raised at the length of the extension. Ordinarily you would expect a player who does not turn 24 until October to be secured on a longer term deal. Yet perhaps this is a sign of the times we are currently living in. It is arguably prudent for Saints not to commit to too many long term deals until the full financial implications of Covid-19 are clear.

There is every reason to believe that coach Kristian Woolf should want Bentley around for a few years more when financial circumstance allows. His versatility has proven invaluable since making his debut in a win over Hull FC in September 2018. In his 25 appearances for the first team to date Bentley has played second row, centre, hooker and loose forward. He has made 12 starts and scored four tries, including a controversial winner in a classic 32-30 win over Salford last May which turned out to be a dress rehearsal for the Grand Final. Disappointment followed for Bentley as he was left out of the Old Trafford showpiece as well as the Challenge Cup final by Justin Holbrook after making the initial 19-man selection ahead of both games. He will no doubt be keen to put that behind him to play a major role in what we hope will be further success under Woolf.

Perhaps that versatility has worked against Bentley as much as in his favour so far in his Saints career. He arrived at the club in 2018 on the back of Leon Pryce’s assertion that he was the best player in the Championship while playing at second row and loose forward for the Bulls. The young forward scored 18 tries in 28 appearances for the Bradford club as his reputation grew amid the chaos of the fall of Bullmania. Pryce has been wrong before, most notably about Bondi and Blackpool, but he wasn’t the only one making comparisons with John Bateman at that time. Bateman had just begun to star at Wigan at that point and there were hopes that the similarly built Bentley could develop at the same rate. Yet his failure to hold down a regular slot at second row or loose forward is down largely to the excellent form of Taia and Peyroux and the emergence of Morgan Knowles as one of the league’s most consistent performers at loose forward.

Bentley, who has made three appearances for Ireland, has more regularly found himself slotting in at hooker in the increasingly regular absences of James Roby. Bentley and Aaron Smith have often filled Roby’s role by committee. Woolf May choose to develop that strategy as Roby heads towards the twilight of his great career. Yet should the Tongan coach choose instead to bring in a big name replacement for the skipper when the time comes Bentley may find that he needs to establish himself in the back row in the longer term.

Wherever he fits in there’s little doubt that Bentley has been a useful contributor so far in 2020. When the action stopped he had scored tries in wins at Hull FC and against Toronto at Warrington in his five appearances. It might be telling or it might be coincidence, but an ankle injury kept Bentley out of the last two games before lockdown which both ended in meek defeat. A home loss to Huddersfield was followed by a game at Castleford which Saints were never in before the government called its belated halt to professional sport.

If Bentley has put that ankle knock behind him during the suspension he could yet be a key figure when play resumes.

Losing Luke

Look, I know that we have been desperate for something to get us all talking about Saints again but this wasn’t what I had in mind. In a terse statement by Eamonn McManus Saints announced today that Luke Thompson will join up with Canterbury Bulldogs with immediate effect. The England prop had already signed a deal with the NRL side which was due to start in 2021. He will instead fly down under straight away after the Bulldogs agreed to pay what Saints are calling an undisclosed sum.

Yet it was not so much the immediate sale of Thompson as the backdrop to it which caused the biggest stir. In his statement McManus revealed that Thompson ‘had opted not to participate in our club wide squad and staff pay reduction arrangement for the 2020 season’. The implication here is that Thompson’s decision not to take a pay cut was instrumental in the club’s decision to let him go to Australia earlier than planned. These are troubled times for everyone financially as the country bids to recover from a health crisis that has cost tens of thousands of lives and crashed the economy to the tune of a 20% downturn in the month of April. Saints desperately needed whatever money they have managed to get from Canterbury. That need was even greater if Thompson had already refused a pay cut.

Clearly the negotiations have left scars. The club ended the brief message by adding that ‘Thompson spent 13 years at Saints, having progressed through our successful academy system to make his debut in 2013. The club wish Luke all the best in the next stage of his career.’. As a tribute to Thompson’s contribution to Saints since joining as an 11-year-old in 2007 it was fairly minimalist. No mention of Thompson’s two Grand Final wins, his three League Leaders Shields, his 157 appearances for Saints or his development into an international player with few equals in his position anywhere in the world. Just an acknowledgement that he was here. For 13 years. And then he left.

Perhaps it is right that some have criticised the club’s statement. It arguably veers too far into dummy spitting territory and is not really a fitting end to the years that Thompson has been part of the fabric of the club as man and boy. Yet equally there is understandable anger, barely disguised, about Thompson’s insistence on receiving his full salary. Thompson is thought to be a very wealthy man outside of rugby league. He doesn’t really need the money even if the argument that he is entitled to it is legally sound. Other players in less fortunate financial circumstances will likely have put their hands up and accepted the reduction. It’s been claimed that Thompson’s decision not to follow suit was an act of altruism aimed at showing the rest of the players and those who might come after that they should not let the club push them around or make them feel like they have to bow down to their demands. After all, it is not yet clear how much of a pay cut McManus has taken to help the club out during the pandemic. If we are all in this together then it should not fall only on the players to be the philanthropists.

And yet for me it seems a stretch to believe that Thompson’s actions are motivated by the need to look after other players or make political points. The kid is not Arthur Fucking Scargill. He’s a young, world class sportsman who would probably tell you that he is entitled to make as much money as possible in what is, after all, a short career. But I come back again to the point about need. Already wealthy and with a lucrative NRL contract in the bag did he need to dig his heels in over the wage cut? Could he not have worn it for a few months knowing full well that he would soon be paid something closer to his actual worth?

Did the notion that such a gesture would go a long way to allowing his hometown club to operate in the way to which they have become accustomed not enter his head? If this were Ben Barba, standing behind the posts miming the counting of his dollars there’d be knowing shrugs all around. Oh aye, another mercenary come for a jolly and jumping ship at the first sign of a better offer. You accept that. But this is a hometown boy. A lad steeped in the club. A symbol for every child in this town of what can be achieved through hard work, discipline and willingness to learn. It’s all just so......disappointing.

If my inclination is to be highly critical of Thompson there are others of a Saints persuasion more than happy to come to his defence. There is a school of thought developing that argues we should not burn our bridges with him just in case he might want to come back to the club somewhere further down the track. This need of some Saints fans to cling on to ex-players baffles me. There are still some people doing the joke about Mal Meninga returning for a second stint. It has only been 36 years since his first and at 59 years of age Big Mal might still be a level or two above all but about three Super League centres. But whether it is Meninga, Barba, Jamie Lyon, James Graham or Sia Soliola there is always a sizeable section of the fan base getting all misty-eyed and insisting that the past has not gone from our grasp. It is delusion. Even before this spat between Thompson and the club there was never any prospect of the 25-year-old returning to Saints in his prime years. This is not Wigan. Once they’re gone, they’re gone until their agent notices that their contract is almost up and tries to sell you a 33-year-old version for top dollar. Three careless owners, 25% effectiveness.

Whether Thompson dons the red vee again or not his departure leaves us with a huge hole to fill in our squad in the here and now. Though it is not yet guaranteed it looks ever more likely that the 2020 season will take place in whatever adapted format is voted through by the 12 disciples of self-interest who run our top flight clubs. If it were to start tomorrow then there would only be Alex Walmsley among our prop corps who could be regarded as 100% reliable and the envy of all our competitors. Matty Lees may see Thompson’s exit as an opportunity to step up and start more regularly with his bench slot back-filled by Jack Ashworth or Callum Hazzard.

The NRL has been under way again since May 28 and with Super League not slated for a resumption until August it is hard to see any of their top line stars being persuaded to come over here in 2020. An import would likely be one not currently enjoying game time in the NRL. Anyone not good enough to secure regular game time in the NRL is not going to be close enough to Thompson’s level to fill our requirements. At home the only name that stands out for me is Liam Watts. Even with Ashworth as a sweetener that would probably require a hefty investment. It would be difficult for McManus to garner much sympathy if he is calling out Thompson for not understanding the club’s financial need on the one hand but then splashing the cash needed to get Watts on the other.

We haven’t started the season all that well. As things stand we could be set to take a little more pain in 2020 before head coach Kristian Woolf can make some important recruitment decisions for 2021 and beyond. The Luke Thompson chapter in the Saints story is closed. We must move on and not let our disappointment fester for too long.

A Magic Day In 2008

I meant to write this closer to the Bank Holiday weekend when Magic should have been played. I’ve never been a huge advocate of Magic but when you haven’t seen a game of rugby league for over two months the thought of being beaten over the head with six of them in just over 24 hours seems far more appealing than it otherwise might. To prove the point I took annual leave and watched all eight NRL games over four days when it resumed last week and it didn’t feel like too much.

Let’s hope the resumption of our Super League season and the rest of this blog are worth waiting for. I’m taking you back to the summer of 2008. Boris Johnson took his first steps towards fucking the country by winning the London mayoral election, Portsmouth won the FA Cup, Rihanna and Leona Lewis were engaged in a tense warble-off at the top of the UK charts and proof was provided that box office figures do not reflect quality as Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull raked in $126million.

It was the second year of rugby league’s bold new enterprise, Millennium Magic, in which all 12 Super League teams gathered at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium to play a round of league fixtures. The first one had been deemed a success overall despite or maybe even in some small way because of its controversial ending. Kevin Sinfield was attempting to land a late penalty goal that would have earned a draw for Leeds Rhinos against the once mighty Bradford Bulls. His shot bounced away off the crossbar before falling kindly for the demonstrably offside Jordan Tansey to cross for a try to seal an unlikely 42-38 win. Video assistance was available - rugby league being 23 years ahead of football in that regard - but referee Steve Ganson decided to make his own mind up. Rather like Robert Hicks at last year’s Challenge Cup final but without the added grimness of Warrington winning a major trophy which tipped Eamonn McManus over the edge of reason.

Derbies were very much the thing in the early years of Magic. It was felt that they were the fixtures most likely to excite the fans. The hope was that fans would stay transfixed as Huddersfield and Wakefield duked it out rather than spend that time in the bar oiling themselves senseless on the cheapest beer they could find in South Wales. And so for the second year running Saints were paired with Wigan. Saints has beaten their rivals 34-18 in the inaugural event. Ordinarily the 2008 game might have been billed as a revenge mission for the Warriors but this was the start of the era we are still in now when great foes meet more often than you are currently allowed out for your exercise and your medication. This would be the fourth meeting since that first Magic Weekend and Saints had won them all by an aggregate of 85-34. It would be another year before Wigan would get the better of Saints again.

Coming into the clash both had been experiencing some iffy form. They had each lost five of their first 12 Super League games. This was unexpected for Saints who had won the League Leaders Shield for each of the previous three seasons and would do so for a fourth in 2008. By contrast two years earlier Wigan had not so much flirted with relegation but positively honey-trapped it like an undercover police officer in a cliched TV drama. They escaped and improved to a sixth-placed finish in 2007 but they had still not reached a Grand Final for five years, hadn’t won the League Leaders Shield in eight years and hadn’t been crowned champions for a decade. Expectation wouldn’t have weighed massively on coach Brian Noble with that sort of recent history at any other club. But this was Wigan, where regardless of the absolute state of their squad they book their Wembley tickets with their Christmas money and proclaim themselves a dark horse when they hobble into the playoffs like Hugh Laurie clanking down the corridor at Princeton—Plainsboro. There was still pressure on Noble.

Saints’ line-up should have provided the Wigan fans with all the anxiety they could handle. Packed with superstars they had four players that I consider all-time greats in the starting 13 (Paul Wellens, Sean Long, Kieron Cunningham and James Graham) and another on the bench in James Roby. Paul Sculthorpe was enduring an injury-ravaged final season with Saints and missed out to spare Wigan having to face a sixth. Outside of that group the options for coach Daniel Anderson weren’t too shabby either. Only 16 men have scored more tries for Saints than Ade Gardner, Matt Gidley played 11 State Of Origin games for New South Wales and 17 times for Australia while Chris Flannery also had Origin experience. Willie Talau and Jason Cayless were New Zealand internationals as was Francis Meli. The winger was slightly maligned by fans back then but would arguably be a standout now. Closer to home Leon Pryce and Lee Gilmour has arrived from Bradford Bulls and would end their careers with 32 Great Britain caps and a Boris Johnson-sized fridge full of medals between them.

On the face of it Wigan were bringing a half-eaten Curly-Wurly to a gunfight. Their star name was stand-off Trent Barrett but his two-year, 60-game stint never really hit the heights expected of a man who gained almost as much Origin and Australian Kangaroos experience throughout his career as Gidley. Barrett wasn’t awful, but he was probably more Josh Perry than Jamie Lyon in terms of impact. Pat Richards had a much longer and more successful Wigan career after making the switch from Wests Tigers. Thomas Leuluai and Sean O’Loughlin’s quality and longevity can be judged by the fact that they are still in the Warriors side in 2020. The one genuine British superstar in the ranks at the time was prop forward Stuart Fielden, drafted in two years earlier to help give relegation the slip.

After these individuals the Wigan group was one of nearly men. Of Richie Mathers’ and Darrell Gouldings. Paul Prescotts and Mickey Highams. On the bench that day was 22-year-old Tommy Coyle, who would make only five appearances for Wigan before a tour of the lower leagues that took in Halifax, Oldham, Hunslet, Whitehaven and Swinton among others. He came in to the squad after an injury to Phil Bailey. There’s probably a Phil Collins/Easy Lover joke in here somewhere but this Phil Bailey was a four-time Australian international and three-time Origin player who managed over 100 appearances for Wigan in case you’re struggling as much as I am to recall him. Yet he was out of this one with illness, giving Coyle an opportunity that he probably hasn’t forgotten.

Though the teams were level on points in the league table at the start of play it didn’t take long for the gap between them to begin to show. Only points difference separated third-placed Saints from fifth-placed Wigan when referee Phil Bentham blew the first whistle. Five minutes in it was Long who bagged the first try. Continuing his decade-long torment of his hometown club who had once released him Long darted over from dummy half to put Saints in front. He converted his own try to make it 6-0.

When listing the array of talent available to Anderson I didn’t mention the name of Jon Wilkin. A future captain of the club who would go on to make over 400 appearances for them. The 2008 Wilkin was a recent Great Britain international. He was next to go over after he was put through by Cayless and avoided the apologetic tackle attempt by Mathers. Long goaled again and Saints led 12-0 at a rate of only just lower than a point a minute.

Six minutes later Wigan drew up plans for their own demise. A pass near midfield was knocked backwards by Talau and scooped up by Meli. Wigan’s players seemed to stop in anticipation of a knock-on call from Bentham. As they hesitated Meli raced 50 metres in a display of what in the current climate would be viewed as admirable social distancing. Long’s third successful conversion gave Saints an 18-0 lead. The contest was as good as over in the first quarter. Thoughts may have even started to turn to the events of three years earlier when Saints had flogged Wigan 75-0 in a Challenge Cup tie at Knowsley Road.

Wigan held out for a spell after Meli’s effort, but would have been dismayed to see Roby entering the fray fresh from the bench after 25 minutes. He replaced Cunningham and within two minutes Saints went further ahead. Gidley spun brilliantly out of the tackle of Richards before placing a pin-point grubber on to which Gardner pounced. Long could not land the extras this time but Saints were putting on a show now at 22-0.

Barely three minutes later Long was creating more goal kicking practice for himself. His pass put Gilmour through a hole in the Wigan defensive line and the second row forward handed on to Talau to touch down. Long’s fourth goal of the evening made it 28-0 with only half an hour played. He was racking up the points, and added four more when he supported Pryce’s break inside his own half and went 55 metres to score Saints’ sixth try of the first half and his second. Long’s conversion made it 34-0. He wasn’t done there, adding an insulting drop-goal four minutes from half-time. It took the proverbial out of Wigan and was completely in keeping with Long’s personality and style of play. It would have been frowned upon perhaps when Mick Potter took over from Anderson the following year, or during the Building Pressure, Energy Battle years of the Cunningham philosophy. In 2008 it was joyful, almost funny, and Saints went to the break 35-0 up.

Then something odd happened. Wigan scored. A rare mistake inside his own quarter from Wellens gave Coyle the opportunity to make his mark. He fed Leuluai from dummy half and the New Zealander broke out of Long’s tackle to score. Richards could not convert but you can’t have everything Wigan fans. At least your lot were on the board now at 35-4.

Long’s response to this rude interruption to what had hitherto been a procession was to complete his hat-trick. Gidley was the creator, breaking the line before finding Long on his inside. It was Long’s fourth hat-trick for Saints but his first since a 54-12 win over Castleford Tigers at Knowsley Road five years earlier. It would also be his last. Long scored only another nine tries for Saints before moving to Hull FC at the end of 2009. Fittingly, his last try was also against Wigan and helped Saints reach the third of five consecutive Grand Finals at the expense of the old enemy. Though we may reflect now that we wish we hadn’t bothered going to Manchester until 2014.

Back to 2008. Saints led 41-4 at this point and their next score sparked the beginning of the famed Wigan Walk. To be fair to their fans they had endured 50 minutes of this outright pummelling before Talau grabbed his second. Wellens shimmied Goulding into one of the many attractive bars outside the Millennium Stadium and handed on to Talau to score. Long failed with the conversion but a 45-4 deficit was enough to convince a few Wigan fans that their time might be better spent elsewhere.

They had probably got far enough away not to have to listen to the roar that greeted Saints’ next score. Even when Long was making mistakes he profited. On 57 minutes he threw what NRL commentators refer to as a ‘bludger’ of a pass out to the right hand edge. It went to ground but bobbled around conveniently for Gardner to pick up and notch his brace. Long’s conversion made it 51-4 and was almost his last act of the day. Anderson withdrew his his halfback combination of Long and Pryce shortly after, presumably to spare Wigan further punishment.

It could have been a coincidence but that move preceded a mini Wigan fight back as first Harrison Hansen and then Higham got over for tries. Hansen’s was the result of a glorious short ball from Barrett as the former St George man showed a flash of his quality. Higham benefitted from an offload from Iafeta Paleaaesina to claim his meat pie. Richards made good on both conversions and Wigan were into double figures at 51-16.

Yet predictably, inevitably, it was Saints who had the last word. Nine minutes from time a move involving Graham, Wilkin and Wellens allowed Gilmour to score against the club for whom he played 108 times from 1997-2001. With Long off the field Gidley took the opportunity to notch the first of his six goals for Saints and complete the scoring at 57-16.

Saints would not lose again in 2008 until the Grand Final. They won 18 out of 19 games in all competitions after this Magic Massacre, the only blemish being a 16-16 draw with Wigan at Knowsley Road in September. They picked up the Challenge Cup during that run, beating Hull FC 28-16 at Wembley in what would turn out to be Sculthorpe’s last game for the club. Yet it was Leeds who were crowned champions. They had finished the regular season a point behind Saints but edged them 24-16 at Old Trafford thanks to a double from Danny McGuire and further scores from Lee Smith and Ryan Hall.

We can’t end on that note. Would it help if I told you that after this drubbing Wigan lost five more times in the league, including another 46-12 hiding by Saints on their own patch? They could only finish fourth before being eliminated from the race to Old Trafford by Leeds.

No. Thought not.