Grand Final Preview - Saints v Wigan

After Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Pirates Of The Caribbean and...er...Shrek comes the quadrilogy to end all quadrilogies as Saints and Wigan meet in the Super League Grand Final for a fourth time this Friday night (November 27, kick-off 8.00pm).

First there was 2000 when the largely unheralded Tim Jonkers stepped from the shadows of his more illustrious team-mates to score the try that sealed a 29-16 win for Ian Millward’s side. We had to wait 10 years for part two in 2010 when former Saint Martin Gleeson scored twice for Wigan to seal a 22-10 victory. He’d found his way to his hometown club via a betting scandal and the even greater ignominy of a spell with Warrington. In 2014 the second minute red card earned by frenzied Wigan nutcase Ben Flower for assaulting an already prone Lance Hohaia helped a Saints side totally devoid of halfbacks to pull off an unlikely but glorious 14-6 win.

The fourth instalment will be somewhat different to the first three. Like most things in the dystopia of 2020 rugby league has been walloped repeatedly by Covid-19. Fixtures have been changed at a few days notice. Win percentage replaced the traditional allocation of points on the league table in a move more premature than the appearance of your mum’s Christmas tree. It all culminated in the sudden curtailment of the regular season, the expansion of the playoffs and a first ever Grand Final to be played away from Old Trafford and on a day of the week that is manifestly not Saturday.

Yet as Freddie Mercury once told us the show - even if it’s at an empty stadium in Hull - must go on. For all it’s monstrosity the 2020 season still has a title on offer. As much as fans of the losing side will try to suggest it there will be no asterisk next to the name of the champions in the record books. Saints versus Wigan always matters and this one - despite all of the chaos that has gone before it - matters a little more than usual. 

With that in mind Saints coach Kristian Woolf will be anxious about the availability of James Graham. The former England prop is set to play the last game of his second spell with Saints before retiring. His two stints in the red vee bookend a stellar career in the NRL with Canterbury Bulldogs and St George-Illawarra Dragons. If he is cleared to play following his early withdrawal from the semi-final win over Catalans Dragons with a head injury Graham will turn out for Saints for the 237th time. He is named by Woolf in an unchanged 21-man squad and is apparently on course to come through all of the required concussion protocols.

The key difference in personnel for Saints in this one as opposed to the 18-6 defeat by Wigan on October 30 is the likely inclusion of Alex Walmsley. The former Batley man was suspended for that game and was badly missed. If he, Graham and James Roby are able to form the starting front row then Saints will have a much more solid base on which to set a platform for the outside backs who never got going in the last meeting. Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook, Kyle Amor and Matty Lees are all in contention to provide back-up in that area but you get the sense that Walmsley’s presence is even more important than that of Graham.

Also playing their last game for Saints are the 2019 Grand Final-winning second row pairing of Zeb Taia and Dominique Peyroux. Taia is retiring at the end of proceedings at the KC Stadium while Woolf has taken the hardly universally popular decision to allow Peyroux to join Toulouse for the start of 2021. Peyroux was a man transformed under the tutelage of Justin Holbrook but has become somewhat marginalised under Woolf. The Tongan coach has preferred James Bentley in recent weeks and to be fair the ex-Bradford Bull has taken his opportunity with some fine performances. Yet if Woolf is shrewd he will find a place in his 17 for Peyroux who still has plenty to offer particularly as a wide running threat. 

Saints will need that having played so obviously into Wigan’s hands last time out with repeated trundling up the middle straight into the teeth of Wigan’s greatest strength - their defence close to the ruck. Saints must give Adrian Lam’s side more to think about defensively as they did when Catalans tried to emulate Wigan’s bruising, uncompromising style of cheating defence. Peyroux could yet be a key figure in that. 

The standout battle in the back divisions is between two ultimately unsuccessful Man Of Steel nominees at fullback. Lachlan Coote has had a second season of dependable swagger which has taken away all the stress of Ben Barba’s departure from the club. Coote is effectively a third halfback for Saints alongside the established duo of Jonny Lomax and Theo Fages. 

The former North Queensland Cowboy will be involved in pretty much everything Saints do in attack as well as providing a comforting reassurance at the back when needed. He is more creative than Fages but his real strength seems to lie in his ability to make good decisions and execute under pressure. He is arguably Saints key player in attack for all the talent elsewhere. 

On the opposite side Wigan have Barba-lite speed merchant and commentator’s favourite Bevan French. The former Parramatta Eels man has agreed to extend his stay with Wigan into 2021 and has certainly brought a new dimension to a previously predictable attack. If French gets into open space there is only Regan Grace on the Saints side capable of staying in the picture. The Welshman will hope that it is others chasing him down that left channel outside of Jack Welsby, who must have nudged ahead of the unfortunate Josh Simm in the race to replace the injured Mark Percival at left centre. Welsby produced an outstanding semi final performance in which he made Israel Folau look ordinary as well as bigoted.

Saints 48-2 win over the Dragons in that semi final was a welcome reminder of what Kevin Naiqama and Tommy Makinson can do on that right edge. It was Makinson who scored the decisive try in 2014 and no doubt the Wigan-born former Golden Boot winner would love to repeat the trick. He is one of five on show that night for Saints who have a chance to be involved again alongside McCarthy-Scarsbrook, Amor, Walmsley and Roby. Wigan also have five in their 21 with the retiring Sean O’Loughlin joined by Joe Burgess, Sam Powell, Liam Farrell and Tony Clubb. The villain of that night - Flower - misses out with a hamstring injury which if nothing else should help prevent the whole thing descended into chaos as early as it did six years ago.

Powell is probably the one likely change to Wigan’s starting line-up having missed his side’s 29-2 semi final demolition of Hull FC last week. Ethan Harvard is out so Joe Bullock and Brad Singleton look set to complete the front row with perhaps Clubb backing them up. Liam Byrne and the lesser-spotted George Burgess are also included along with twin grubs Morgan Smithies and Oliver Partington. Wigan’s middle remains a chamber of horrors sprinkled with a touch of class here and there from O’Loughlin and Farrell and the more workmanlike but less psychotic Willie Isa.  

As well as French the burden of creativity falls on Jackson Hastings - playing in his second consecutive Grand Final against Saints after being on the losing side with Salford last year - veteran schemer Thomas Leuluai who has a nasty habit of doing well against Saints and perhaps young star Harry Smith. His talent is not in doubt but his lack of experience may be a weakness that Saints chief halfback-botherer Morgan Knowles can exploit. If Wigan have a tactical epiphany and work it wide then the left edge duo of the classy Oliver Gildart and the pacy Joe Burgess spells trouble. Zak Hardaker uses all of his brain capacity for rugby league and has made a useful transition from fullback to centre while outside him Jake Bibby is another with bad memories of last year’s season finale with the Red Devils.

Refereeing arrangements are not something which warrant more than a passing mention in my pre-game scene-setters but there is a fair amount of controversy about the appointment of Chris Kendall for this one. Kendall has somehow managed to be appointed to what will be a seventh consecutive Wigan game which might as well put him on Ian Lenagan’s payroll. It’s an extraordinary decision by the always eccentric governing body which will hopefully not come back to bite them on their champagne guzzling, finger buffet-destroying collective derriere. 

Notwithstanding Kendall’s absurd run of consecutive matches involving the Warriors he was quite awful in the semi final win over Hull. For once, I am sad to have to report that the kind of myopic paranoid wrecks who announce their team’s defeat on Facebook as soon as they learn the identity of the referee might have something to fear here. Why would the authorities leave themselves open to the inevitable innuendos that will follow any shred of controversy should it go Wigan’s way? Hey...this is rugby league.

If you had asked me before the Catalans game how confident I was of getting the better of Wigan in a Grand Final my response would have been fairly cagey. The team that took to the field that day was capable but likely to hamstring itself with dullard, NRL tribute-band conservatism. Eighty minutes later Woolf had showed that perhaps he has learned that if he lets his side play to its strengths and successfully distracts them from the tsunami of shithousing that is coming their way from Adrian ‘coach of the year 👀’ Lam’s side then logic suggests Saints will be too strong. Saints by 12.

Squads:

St Helens;

1. Lachlan Coote, 2. Tommy Makinson, 3. Kevin Naiqama, 5. Regan Grace, 6. Jonny Lomax, 7. Theo Fages, 8. Alex Walmsley, 9. James Roby, 11. Zeb Taia, 12, Dom Peyroux, 13. LMS, 14. Morgan Knowles, 15. Matty Lees, 16. Kyle Amor, 19, Aaron Smith, 20. James Bentley, 22. Jack Welsby, 23. Joe Batchelor, 26, Josh Simm, 27, Lewis Dodd, 32. James Graham.

Wigan Warriors;

1. Zak Hardaker 3. Chris Hankinson 4. Oliver Gildart 5. Joe Burgess 6. Bevan French 7. Tommy Leuluai 8. Tony Clubb 9. Sam Powell 10. George Burgess 11. Willie Isa 12. Liam Farrell 13. Sean O’Loughlin 15. Joe Greenwood 16 Morgan Smithies 17. Oliver Partington 19 Joe Bullock 20. Liam Byrne 23. Jake Bibby 28. Harry Smith 31. Jackson Hastings 38. Brad Singleton

Referee: Shaun Wane Chris Kendall