Saints opening night victory over Salford at Headingley cannot be viewed as anything other than a success. With so much time having gone by it was great just to have the team and the game itself back, even if for now visual access is still limited to the medium of television.
Saints are going for a third consecutive Super League title so expectation is high. There’s a tendency to believe it’s just a matter of turning up and collecting another gong. Wigan’s laughably bad performance in edging past Leigh Centurions in Round 1 won’t have done anything to dampen the expectations of Saints fans. But the fact remains there are new signings to bed in and good players to be replaced as well as one or two significant dressing room influences. It was never going to fit together perfectly in the first game of the season.
A couple of key absentees made things more difficult for coach Kristian Woolf in this one. Morgan Knowles was ruled out when the 21-man squad was named on Wednesday due to his recent thumb surgery, but it was the loss of Lachlan Coote that had the greater effect on the attacking cohesion. Jack Welsby is a capable deputy at fullback but we should remember that he is a 20 year-old still developing his game. Despite elevating himself into Saints folklore with his Grand Final winning try last term Welsby probably does not make the current 17 if everyone is fit. That’s a reflection of how strong the squad is rather than any slight on him. It sounds ridiculous to say his time will come given that he will probably never have a moment to match that one at Hull in November, but in terms of regular first team involvement his best days are still ahead of him. For now he doesn’t quite provide the link between Jonny Lomax and the rest of the back line that Coote does when Saints are at their best.
It was partly this and partly Woolf’s conservative game planning which placed too much creative responsibility on Lomax. At halfback Theo Fages is often a spectator. Ordinarily his predictable kicking game doesn’t help but on this night it led to three Saints tries as Tommy Makinson, Mark Percival and Kevin Naiqama all benefitted. Other than play 6 the Frenchman rarely gets his hands on the ball in Woolf’s revolutionary false 7 system. That makes it hard to know whether Lewis Dodd would open things up if he were to be drafted in to the starting line-up at Fages’ expense. What we can say is that the Saints attack was a bit of a conundrum on this night. They were over-reliant on the left edge yet left winger Regan Grace received only one pass in the entire first half. He scored, naturally. But a lot of the raids down the left ended with Lomax travelling frustratedly down a blind alley.
When Lomax was able to work a bit of magic in the first half his efforts were scuppered by issues of timing and a general lack of sharpness. Had Saints had more than one pre-season friendly then perhaps Lomax and Percival would have been in sync enough to combine a split second earlier and avoid having a score chalked off for a forward pass. When Lomax launched a rare foray on the opposite side of the field he was pinged for a double movement. Yet Grace’s try added to Makinson’s earlier effort and some more modest at-the-buzzer heroics from Welsby in the form of a drop-goal gave Saints a pretty comfortable 13-0 lead at the break.
Though Salford briefly threatened to get back into it through Ken Sio’s converted try Saints always looked in control. They even managed some more expansive play late on, missing a number of very presentable opportunities to add to their points tally. Yet it was their defensive excellence and the pack - including three new signings making their competitive Saints debuts - which ensured a measure of control. Joel Thompson and Sione Mata’utia started in the back row while Agnatius Paasi came off the bench to put a shift in at prop. His participation was ended when he was involved in a sickening clash with Pauli Pauli which left the Saints man out cold and already out of Thursday’s Round 2 clash with Hull KR due to concussion protocols. Yet all three can be satisfied with their contributions. Like Knowles and James Bentley they all run hard, tackle tirelessly and have a pathological aversion to conceding tries.
They’re just not that flashy. On this evidence and with James Roby now advancing in years there’s really only Alex Walmsley in this forward group who you can expect to get you off your seat (on the sofa) on a weekly basis. The big man delivered again late in the piece, crashing his way through several bewildered Red Devils defenders to score his first try of the season at the first time of asking. He was a menace all night as usual, gobbling up 131 metres on 20 carries and still doing his defensive work with 26 tackles. Yet even Walmsley takes a more direct route to providing the entertainment than perhaps some of the great offloading forwards of the past who were more in the Saints tradition. Again, this feels like a consequence of risk averse coaching.
In addition to Paasi’s injury Saints also had to withdraw Percival late in the game. The England centre suffered a slight but unspecified knock. Caution is understandable with Percival who only managed five appearances for Saints in 2020. His try in this one was his first since the 2019 Grand Final victory over the Red Devils. Woolf has assured us that Percival is going to be ok to face Rovers but if further protection is needed you wouldn’t worry about Welsby or Josh Simm stepping into the left centre role.
The only other negative on the night was an incident involving Matty Lees which could lead to a spell on the sidelines if the RFL disciplinary takes a dim view of it. He seemed to go in late, cannonball-style on Lee Mossop. The fact that Mossop’s leg was not planted straight may save Lees but it was exactly the type of challenge which we berate the other lot from over the lump for. We’d be lobbying for the return of capital punishment if Morgan Smithies made a challenge like that one. I personally do not want to see Saints players doing it. If Lees does get a ban it will cause a problem with Paasi already ruled out. It may provide an opportunity for Dan Norman, who joined the club from London Broncos in the off season but wasn’t selected for his debut against Richard Marshall’s men.
So we move on, still perhaps with the handbrake on, to the challenge of Rovers on Thursday night. They should not be dismissed given the depth of reserves they showed in coming back from 28-4 to Catalans to force the game into Golden Point extra time at 28-28. Saints title defence is on track but you can’t help but feel that if they dig a little deeper they will find a little more too.
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