Come back! Those of you who immediately took to social media to declare Super League’s restart a failure in the wake of Hull FC’s positive Covid-19 tests can relax. A quick fixture reshuffle and everything is back on. That means I can now review Saints’ startling destruction of Leeds Rhinos without peppering my prose with sad reminders of a season lost.
Saints had restarted brilliantly with a 34-6 towelling of Catalans Dragons but this was an even more joyous expression of their vast superiority. Leeds were woeful. Richard Agar had started to look like a proper rugby league coach before lockdown but his inability to find answers here made him look more like the chancing PE teacher his detractors have always suspected him to be. Yet whoever was in charge of the Rhinos would not have found a way to stop Saints on this march. Even Kristian Woolf seemed incredulous, sat there belly-laughing, shoulders shaking like that infamous gif of Tory ice-witch Theresa May.
A lot seems to have happened in rugby league in the 72 hours since I was fretting about Mark Percival’s absence. The England centre was not risked because of a tight hamstring. His place went to Matty Costello, who had not been named in the original 21-man squad on Friday. One of a raft of changes to conditions during the Covid environment of 2020 is that clubs are able to draft in players from outside their 21 without losing an interchange. Huge sighs of relief all round. You wouldn’t want to face a team possessing Agar’s strategic acumen with only seven interchanges, would you?
The only other change saw Matty Lees come on to the bench. He missed the Dragons win with illness (no, not that one) but replaced Joe Batchelor in the 17. That meant James Bentley kept his place in the second row alongside Zeb Taia, leaving no place for Dominique Peyroux. Despite several attempts by Leeds defenders to separate his head from his shoulders Bentley put in another solid performance. Another 53 tackles to add to the 46 he managed last week marked him out as Saints’ hardest working defender for the second week in succession. He also found time to provide the assist for Lachlan Coote’s try which completed the rout. In a packed schedule Peyroux will be needed. What he has contributed since becoming revitalised under Justin Holbrook cannot be understated or forgotten, but we may just be seeing the beginnings of a changing of the guard in the second row. Bentley is now proving his worth there and Joel Thompson of Manly Sea Eagles is expected to replace Taia in 2021.
If the second row is in fine fettle words fail me in describing the condition of the front row. This was a different sort of performance to that which we saw against Catalans last week. Only 10 offloads versus 17 in the win over Steve McNamara’s side highlight the difference in approach. According to the TV commentator’s James Graham sledged the Leeds side about the fact that Saints would ‘get them up the middle’. That certainly would be backed up by the evidence on the field. Graham scored the first of Saints’ eight tries with a powerful charge to the line, which was seen and then raised by Alex Walmsley as he took three or four tacklers over the line with him for Saints’ second. Throughout the afternoon Saints provided proof that you don’t need to play with great expansion and width to leave fans satisfied that they have been entertained. Just win, and win this well.
In all Walmsley ripped off 205 metres on 20 carries. The Leeds pack just could not handle him. The highlight of the Walmsley masterclass was not his try - breathtaking though that was - but his assist for Theo Fages four-pointer. Walmsley broke the line and surged down field into open space before turning into Alfie Lange to find Fages in support on his right hand side. Walmsley was jogging backwards, gesturing towards a giddy Saints bench in celebration before Fages had even dotted the ball down beneath the sticks. It was rugby league’s version of Usain Bolt slowing down 20m from the line but breaking the 100m world record regardless.
Which I’m sure you’ll agree is a seamless link to the performance of another great sprinter, Regan Grace. The thing about comprehensively monstering your opposition pack in the early going is that it allows you to bring out your box of tricks later on. So it was that Grace was able to cruise past the statuesque Leeds cover for two length of the field efforts either side of an acrobatic, flying finish in the left hand corner. Grace’s hat-trick of tries were the first three of his 2020 campaign so far. In a year in which patience has been a necessity for all of us they were a wonderful reminder that some things really are worth waiting for.
For the first he took Coote’s pass five metres from his own line and glided through a chaotic Rhinos line before dancing inside two Leeds defenders and jogging to the line. After his flying second his third was the best of the lot, fielding a kick inside his own in-goal area before taking the scenic route back into the field of play and streaking away to score. Several Rhinos defenders gave chase without ever looking remotely likely to catch him. It was a special performance from a special player, and one that attracted lots of attention from fans of Welsh rugby union on social media. If rugby league is serious about establishing itself in the consciousness of those outside the M62 it needs to make sure that extravagant talents like Grace are not lost to the other code.
When he had stopped giggling Woolf typically deflected the attention away from his side’s attacking endeavours and praised his players for their defence. Shutting Leeds out is no mean feat. Doing so on their own patch at Headingley is a first for any side in the Super League era. On the face of it 28 missed tackles isn’t a stellar statistic, but it is the work that Woolf’s side do to recover from those misses which makes them so formidable. The Rhinos didn’t get a huge amount of good ball as the Saints attack dominated. Yet there was a spell early in the game and another one close to half-time and just before Grace’s first effort when Agar’s men put pressure on the Saints goal-line defence. They bent but didn’t break, as champions are wont to do.
The win lifted Saints up to second in the table. Only Wigan lie above Woolf’s men now and it is hard to see on this form how Adrian Lam’s infinitely less convincing outfit will hold them off for too much longer. The next challenge is not Wakefield Trinity - who gave the Warriors an almighty quiver before going down by a single point immediately prior to Saints’ win - but Castleford as the authorities execute a swift fixture shuffle to combat the Hull FC Covid mini outbreak. A late change of opponent is unlikely to faze the laughing Woolf as they look to wreak yet more havoc on a Tigers side who found Catalans too hot to handle on Saturday.
It can’t come soon enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment