The games are getting closer, but Saints remain clear at the top of the Super League table after a bum-squeaker of a win over Warrington on Thursday night (May 19).
It was a Saints performance which was by turns frantic, nerve-shredding, frustrating but still somehow satisfying. Much like the victory over Salford Red Devils three weeks ago the points were sealed by a late, desperate cover tackle following a lung-busting chase. Where Morgan Knowles had sprinted the length of the field to halt Chris Atkin at the end of that Salford win, Tommy Makinson came from the opposite wing to snuff out Connor Wrench’s opportunity to be the last gasp hero. Makinson claimed that honour for himself.
The same old injury problems exist for Saints, meaning Kristian Woolf was limited in how much tinkering he could do with the line-up following last weekend’s 24-10 win over Hull FC. In the end - with Lewis Dodd, Will Hopoate and Regan Grace all still out - Woolf decided not to make any changes at all. The match day 17 was exactly the same as it had been against the black and whites six days earlier. That meant another run at centre for Sione Mata’utia - directly opposite his brother Peter - and another game on the wing for Mark Percival.
Jonny Lomax again defended at fullback while operating as the main half in attack. He was again joined in the halves by Ben Davies though it often seemed to be nominal fullback Jack Welsby who was Lomax’s main accomplice. Curtis Sironen continued in the second row alongside Joe Batchelor with Mata’utia required elsewhere. James Roby made his 453rd Super League appearance, just one short of the record held by ex-Leeds Rhinos maestro and occasional head-butter Kevin Sinfield.
Warrington came in off the back of an abject capitulation in Perpignan against the Catalans Dragons and predictably there were changes. Josh Thewlis was injured so Gareth Widdop lined up at fullback after missing the last three. Toby King returned to the centres allowing Ben Currie to move back to his favoured second row spot. Joe Philbin was promoted to start at prop alongside Mike Cooper at the expense of Rob Mulhern who started on the bench.
A lot has been made of Saints’ high error count. Probably with some justification but maybe not as much as you might think. Woolf’s side committed 14 errors in this one compared with a season average coming in of 11.75 per game. That’s a significant increase but the truth is that nobody has made more than Saints’ 155 errors in Super League this year. Welsby, Lomax and Hurrell can all be found inside the top 10 culprits throughout the league. Yet this must also have something to do with Saints having a greater share of possession than their opponents almost all of the time.
The first signal that Saints might not be at their best in terms of ball control came early. Their first real attack was thwarted when Sironen could not hold on to Davies’ pass close to the line. Within the first 10 minutes of the game Saints had lost good field position through sloppy handling as both Lomax and Mata’utia coughed up possession.
Fortunately, despite the profligacy in attack Saints’ defence was as mean as ever for the most part. This was the third league game in a row in which Saints conceded exactly 10 points. It is that defensive solidity which is keeping us ahead of the competition at present. As much as Baz and Tez want to go on about how brilliantly Warrington played I suspect the reason that teams are getting closer to us is that the injuries to Dodd and Lomax have left us in a bit of a quandary in the halves.
That in turn has made our attack look decidedly average. Saints have scored a total of just 50 points in those last three league wins over Salford, Hull and now Warrington at an average of just 16.6 points per game. Contrast that with our average coming into that run of games - and so before Lomax began playing hurt - which was 25.8 points per game. You don’t need to be a rugby league genius to work out that if Saints score 25+ points in a game they will probably win. If they are only scoring around 16 things become less certain.
That great defensive quality showed when the home side launched their first real raid of the night. King was bundled into touch by a combination of Batchelor, Hurrell and Makinson. Yet it took only two more minutes for Daryl Powell’s side to take the lead. The Dannii Minogue of the Mata’utia family - that’s Peter lest there be any doubt - found Connor Wrench in space on the right. The winger who is in the side for the seemingly sulking Josh Charnley tore down the flank and found Widdop in support on his inside. Widdop made it to the line despite the efforts of Makinson. The Saints winger had sprinted from the other side of the field in a foreshadowing of his later heroics which would preserve this win. Widdop couldn’t find the range with the conversion but Wire - on a run of seven defeats in their previous nine in Super League - were leading the champions 4-0.
It was noticeable that Powell had advised his troops to play expansively, to try to go around rather than through the Saints rearguard. If I were a neutral I would have found this refreshing. As it was I was just slightly unnerved by it. Furthermore it was a similar approach to that taken by Salford when they came within a Knowles tackle of an upset. In the absence of a definitive blueprint for beating Saints expansive rugby seems as close as any other approach.
Now, remember those last tackle issues we had in the semi-final? I know, sorry to bring it up but they reared their head again here when Sironen was caught on the last just a few metres out. Sironen apparently used to play a bit of what his countrymen would call five-eighth when he was younger. Given that, it is surprising how often he is caught on the last. At some point I’d expect him to kick the ball if the plan has gone so awry that he finds himself in possession on the final play. Unless Woolf has strictly forbidden him to do so.
Turning the ball over so close to the line turned out well in the end. If Powell had asked for adventure from his side Peter Mata’utia took it to extremes by trying to offload well inside his own 10 metre line. It was ill-advised and was almost snaffled by Knowles who got a hand to it but could only nudge it forward.
From the resultant scrum Saints got back into the game in especially pleasing circumstances. I have been moaning in this column about teams holding the ball at the back of the scrum to try to get the opposition to break early and offer a cheap penalty. Imagine my delight then when Warrington tried this on with Saints only to see it blow up spectacularly in their faces.
As Daryl Clark eventually got round to picking the ball up at the base of the scrum the ball squirmed through his legs and rolled back towards the Warrington line. It was picked up by Walmsley who only had to fall over to notch his 43rd try for Saints and his second of the season. Makinson added the extras to put Saints into the lead 6-4 with a quarter of the game gone.
An opportunity to extend that lead was lost when Walmsley could not hold on to possession in contact. Saints had again got within 10 metres off the back of a penalty for offside. Perhaps the big prop was tiring. Agnatius Paasi came on to replace him and almost had an immediate impact. It’s fair to say Paasi likes an offload. He produced a classic of the genre here to release Lomax into Warrington territory. He handed on to Davies but the youngster’s pass to the left flank only found the waiting arms of George Williams. At which point the ex-Wigan man raced away only to find himself on the end of a high shot from Percival. Unlike his yellow card-earning effort during the Salford game Percival’s challenge slid up off the shoulder of Williams. Referee James Child rightly deemed that the penalty was sufficient.
Wire fans may have felt that decision was lenient, but they got away with one of their own a couple of minutes later. Makinson appeared to lose the ball while regaining his feet to play it but it seemed clear that there was contact on the Saints man by Mulhern. The Wolves prop did it in as subtle a manner as being a prop forward allows, but there seemed more than a suggestion of a knee getting in the way of Makinson’s attempted restart.
Five minutes out from half time it was Matty Davis’ turn to go close. Wire had been gifted possession when James Bell’s pass to Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook was ruled forward. Yet the Saints pair redeemed themselves, hauling Davis down on the last play just five metres out in conjunction with Batchelor.
McCarthy-Scarsbrook receives about as much praise in this column as Liz Truss, but he was central to helping Saints extend their lead before half-time. Lomax put up a lobbed kick in an attacking position, where McCarthy-Scarsbrook leapt highest to bat the ball back to Roby. The ball was moved along to Lomax and then Paasi, who found an outrageous left to right long ball to Hurrell. The Tongan centre did the rest, finding Makinson on his outside to stroll in for his 14th try of the Super League season. That put the winger level at the top of the try-scoring charts with Ken Sio and Jai Field ahead of their games over the weekend. Spare a thought for McCarthy-Scarsbrook though, whose fine contribution wasn’t even the most impressive by a prop forward in this paragraph. Makinson found a stunning touchline conversion to send Saints in at half-time leading 12-4.
You’d expect Saints to kick on from this position. The last time the champions lost after leading at half-time was that freakish 31-30 defeat to Catalans Dragons at last season’s Magic Weekend in Newcastle. And it was Saints who threatened first after the break. Welsby produced a searing break, going 60 metres before being cut down by Wrench 10 metres out. On the next play Davies tried to go himself from dummy half but only succeeded in spilling the ball forward.
A promising player, Davies is nevertheless looking increasingly uncomfortable at stand-off. When it was an experiment in a game at Castleford that few Saints fans cared about he was praised. Now that he has become the permanent solution attitudes towards him have changed somewhat. None of this is his fault, but you have to wonder whether Woolf might spend much of the next fortnight - during which Saints are inactive due to the Challenge Cup final - mulling over an alternative halfback combination. There’s a very good argument in any case that Lomax should not be playing if he has to be hidden from the defensive line at fullback. At least Woolf has the time to figure it out before another trip to Toulouse on June 4. We will win there easily. What? Oh…
After the let off from Davies Warrington countered. Currie made strides down the left flank but his attempted pass to Matty Ashton hit the turf. The winger picked it up but then was promptly dumped into touch by Hurrell. The disease of being caught on the last tackle was becoming infectious. Oliver Holmes could only find Sironen with a desperate pass when he tried keeping it alive rather than finding a kicker. Saints produced a more extravagant movement - again involving a now familiar Paasi offload and several moments when Roby looked suspiciously like a man who had absolutely been brought to ground - before Welsby was halted with no more tackles in the bank.
A try at this point would probably have killed Wire off and Saints went close twice in quick succession. Hurrell intercepted a Stefan Ratchford pass and - though he never really looked like outpacing Ashton - his advantage was sufficient that the Warrington winger only just had enough real estate to enable him to bring Hurrell down after a 60 metre charge. On the ensuing set Roby tried to pinch a trademark number nine’s score from dummy half but lost his grip on the ball in the act of trying to reach over Warrington bodies to ground it. Bizarrely, Child saw fit to have the incident reviewed by Ben Thaler in the video booth when it didn’t really look all that close even at full speed. The replays confirmed the suspicions of everyone.
Shortly after that Warrington really got back into the contest. There seemed little on when Minogue Mata’utia caught a strange looking Welsby kick which went far higher than he had intended and only travelled around 20 metres. Motionless for an instant, Mata’utia found Widdop running a great line made even better by the fact that Roby seemed to slip. Widdop surged down the field and found Williams who just about had enough pace to finish despite Welsby’s best efforts. Ratchford tagged on two more points to cut Saints’ lead to 12-10.
Saints were now involved in what boring old ex-Leeds players on the telly call the arm-wrestle. There was an edginess about both teams, manifested when Davis coughed up possession on his own line. Yet it would not prove costly as Matty Lees fluffed his lines also, dropping the ball in contact with the line in sight.
Warrington’s two tries had come from deep, and they threatened another when Ashton broke into space inside his own quarter. He only had the demonstrably slower Lomax to beat, but the Saints man effected the perfect, try-saving one-on-one tackle before Ashton got the opportunity to turn it into a foot race. Lomax at fullback may not be an ideal scenario but we were certainly grateful for his positional nous and his tackling technique on that occasion.
It was a rare opportunity in a tight final chapter. Nerves frayed when Percival shelled possession inside his own quarter as he was hit by Cooper, Clark and his namesake Jason. Yet Ratchford handed the initiative back almost straight away, failing to hold Daryl Clark’s pass under pressure from Welsby. Walmsley went close, and Batchelor’s turnover on the last soon after felt more deliberate than some other examples over the last few weeks. It at least meant that Warrington would have to go 90 metres to score the go-ahead try and only four minutes remained.
That logic might have looked shabby had Ashton taken Cooper’s pass after the latter was put through the defensive line by King. Cooper’s pass had to be looped high over the swarming Saints defence and Ashton just couldn’t quite bring it under his spell. If he had done so all that would have remained would have been the shutting of the gate.
Saints stuck with the strategy of playing field position rather than risk a kick into the in-goal which if too heavy would offer Wire seven tackles to go 80 metres. Far better to give them six tackles to go 95 metres so Hurrell drove to the line on the last and accepted the tackle. It was a decision Saints almost rued. Almost.
From nowhere, Widdop produced a looped kick out to the right wing where Wrench grabbed it and shrugged off Percival in one movement. Wrench sped away, gliding past Lomax whose nous and technique couldn’t help him against raw pace on this occasion. Enter Makinson, tearing across from the other side of the field with the sort of speed and determination which typifies him. Like Knowles before him, Makinson executed an exemplary cover tackle which forced Wrench to try to throw the ball back in-field in hope rather than expectation of finding a team-mate. His momentum forced that attempt to go forward.
Saints played out the final set to hang on for a gutsy if unconvincing win. They had been held scoreless - entirely pointless - for the whole of the second half, just like in the bad old days of the fag end of Keiron Cunningham’s reign. And this against a side who had conceded 30 second half tries this season, the second worst record in the competition coming in. Only it wasn’t at all like that. Saints tried to play when it was appropriate, they had offloads aplenty particularly through Paasi. They just didn’t have their usual sense of direction and purpose in attack. And that is almost entirely down to the current problems at halfback.
Makinson’s final contribution obviously marks him out as a key to the win, but he also chewed up 176 metres with ball in hand, more than anyone on either side. Percival had some difficult moments but added 170 of his own while all of Walmsley (155), Lomax (142), Welsby (138), Hurrell (132), Sironen (111) and Mata’utia (100) hit the century mark. For the hosts Wrench (160), Ashton (123), Widdop (122), Joe Bullock (104) and Mulhern (102) led the way.
Defensively Makinson was not among the top tacklers but he made by far the most important. Batchelor led in this category with 45 but the only other Saint to reach more than 30 was Roby with 36. In a defensive win, the workload was mostly shared. Similarly, only Holmes (44) and Daryl Clark (43) topped the 30 mark for Warrington.
And so thoughts turn to France in two weeks time. Will Woolf send Lomax for the surgery he looks like he needs? Will he persevere with Davies at 6? Will Hopoate or Grace return? Answering these questions is why he is one of the game’s top coaches and I just like to write and natter about them. At least he knows that if there aren’t any perfect solutions in attack his side are still capable of winning on the back of their defence and sheer bloody mindedness. The games may be getting closer, but it is still the name of St Helens you see at the top of the Super League table going into the second half of the season.
Wigan losing at Hull doesn’t hurt either. They have a bigger game next week, mind. All Giants aren’t we?
Warrington: Widdop, Wrench, Mata’utia, King, Ashton, Ratchford, Williams, Philbin, D Clark, Cooper, Currie, Holmes, Magoulias. Interchanges: Mulhern, J Clark, Bullock, Davis
Saints: Welsby, Makinson, Hurrell, Mata’utia, Percival, Davies, Lomax, Walmsley, Roby, Lees, Batchelor, Sironen, Knowles. Interchanges: Paasi, McCarthy-Scarsbrook, Lussick, Bell
Referee: James Child
Video Referee: Ben Thaler