Table-topping Saints will hope to get back in the winning habit when they host Castleford Tigers on Sunday afternoon (August 7, kick-off 1.00pm).
The champions suffered a jolt to the ego last time out as they were clubbed 44-12 by an inspired Salford Red Devils. The damage wasn’t limited to their pride. The loss also meant that Wigan closed the gap at the top of the table to four points. The two rivals are due to meet at the end of August so Saints can ill afford another slip up before then if they have designs on winning the League Leaders Shield.
Meanwhile Lee Radford’s Tigers need the points to continue their playoff push. After an iffy start to the season Cas have shot back into the top five. A run of five wins from six league games was only halted by a bewildering 32-6 pounding by Wakefield Trinity last week. Still, the Tigers remain in position to secure a tilt at the playoffs. A win here would go a long way towards that aim. Yet it’s congested in that area of the table to the extent that a defeat in this one would leave them vulnerable to missing out on the end of season jamboree.
You’d expect a man like Saints coach Kristian Woolf - a man who has won back to back Grand Finals - to be greatly irritated by an experience like the one at Salford. Afterwards he made all the right noises about fixing up the the parts of his side’s game which failed to function at the AJ Bell Stadium. You wouldn’t bet against him to do just that, particularly at home where Saints have lost precisely four times in the three Super League seasons that Woolf has been in charge. Inconveniently, one of those was against the side from The Jungle.
Also hindering Woolf’s mission to banish the memory of Salford is the ongoing injury and suspension situation. There was grave news coming out of the club this week when it was revealed that Regan Grace has ruptured his Achilles tendon, effectively ending his Saints career. Grace has been ruled out for the remainder of the season and with an agreement in place for him to join Racing 32 in French rugby union at the end of the year we will not see him in Saints colours again. That’s a devastating blow to the winger who was one of a handful of players targeting a fourth successive winning Grand Final appearance. It is not to be for Grace who ends his five-year stint in Super League with 88 tries in 142 appearances, three Grand Final winners rings and a Challenge Cup winners medal.
It also leaves Woolf with one more selection headache given the key players he is already without. Sione Mata’utia serves the last of his three-match suspension for his red card in the win over Huddersfield while Mark Percival and Will Hopoate are both still sidelined. Lewis Dodd’s season was ended at Easter a fact which - more than any other injury issue - has left Woolf reluctantly having to move around the pieces of his title-winning squad. This week - as well as Grace - Woolf has been hit by the loss of impact prop Agnatius Paasi due to the concussion protocols.
But it’s not all bad. The good news is two-fold. Firstly Curtis Sironen’s bicep injury is not as bad as first feared and the former Manly player is included in this week’s 21. That is vital with Mata’utia still out. Sironen is enjoying his best form since arriving at Saints at the start of the season. There is at least some correlation between Saints taking a fearful hiding at Salford and Sironen’s early exit from it. All being well he will continue to partner Joe Batchelor in the second row with Morgan Knowles at loose forward. Sam Royle was recently recalled from a loan spell and will be standing by for at least a place in the 17 should Sironen not be risked.
The second piece of good news is potentially even more significant. An actual game changer to use the modern parlance. Tommy Makinson has not featured since damaging a hamstring in the defeat at Catalans Dragons on July 2 but is back in contention this week. In some ways his inclusion would offset the the loss of Grace but with Percival and Hopoate missing there are still holes to fill in the back line. Expect Makinson and Jon Bennison to occupy the wing spots with Konrad Hurrell and Ben Davies in the centres. Jack Welsby is the most likely candidate to play fullback but with Dodd out that leaves a spot in the halves to fill. James Roby has been doing James Roby things as a makeshift but after a heavy beating and post-match talk of doing things differently you wonder whether Woolf has a different plan for this week.
What that plan might be isn’t clear. Nor is it particularly clear that Roby needs to move. Saints chugged along nicely with Roby in the halfback role in the win over Huddersfield if rather less convincingly in edging out Wakefield. The skipper is more than capable of doing the job. Yes, moving him back to nine would maximise his influence on the game particularly defensively, but if Woolf goes down that route he is still likely to find himself fielding a temporary halfback whose skills would be better utilised in another position. There are no easy solutions.
Paasi’s misfortune offers an opportunity for Dan Norman to see some action behind starting props Alex Walmsley and Matty Lees. Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook is a permanent fixture on the Saints bench while Jake Wingfield and James Bell will likely join him. Unless Woolf can find a better option at halfback than Roby then Joey Lussick is likely to be the starting number nine. Youngsters Dan Hill, Lewis Baxter and Taylor Pemberton are also included but George Delaney misses out having made the initial squad selection for the last two.
Radford is without eccentric interviewee Jake Mamo due to a head knock, though quite how anybody could tell that he was concussed is unknown. George Lawler is another absentee alongside front rowers Daniel Smith and Nathan Massey. Niall Evalds and Saints 2014 Grand Final winner Jordan Turner don’t make it either. Jake Trueman is in the Grace-esque position of having to sit out the final weeks of his time at his club with an injury. The stand-off will be joining Hull FC for 2023 but for now remains a significant loss to Castleford’s creative department with a season ending injury of his own.
On the other side of the ledger Castleford can once again call on some valuable experience. Former Saints loanee Gareth O’Brien returns after a concussion as does the recently acquired former Leeds Rhinos back rower Alex Mellor. Cheyse Blair is also available again after serving a two-game ban following his sending off in the 35-22 win over Warrington on July 16. Also present is the lesser spotted Sosaia Feki. He features for the first time in 2022 and if selected will make only his second appearance for the club thanks to some horrendous luck with injuries since his 2020 arrival from Cronulla Sharks. Breath-holding is not recommended.
The return of O’Brien is a significant boost for Radford as the ex-Warrington and Salford man can cover either halfback position or fullback. Saints’ 2018 Dream Team star Danny Richardson has looked great at times during Castleford’s recent upturn in form but has also rather abruptly reverted to the mean of looking tentative and inhibited at others. Perhaps the return of O’Brien will be helpful to him and if not then at least Cas have another creative option should Richardson start to retreat to his shell. Greg Eden has been the kind of stand-in playmaker that makes Roby look like a regular but with Trueman out Radford finds himself in a position not dissimilar to Woolf’s where halves are concerned. Needs must. While Eden is not on the wing there might be another opportunity for the pacy Jason Qareqare along with former Hull FC man Bureta Fairamo.
Up front Paul McShane is vital to everything the Tigers do while there is more craft in the pack in the shape of Joe Westerman at loose forward. Liam Watts and Kenny Edwards are two who can be explosive on their day but whose penchant for an offload can get them into difficulties. George Griffin is a willing worker, but whether there is enough in the Tigers forward ranks to trouble the Walmsley-led Saints pack is questionable. Walmsley is in something of a slump by his own ludicrous standards. Maybe he’s not getting enough sleep having just welcomed his third child into the world. If he fires you sense a long day for the Tigers front row.
This is the second meeting of the season between these two. The first is the stuff of asterisks for most Saints fans due to Woolf’s team selection on that day back in April. Saints were coming off two tough games in the space of three days at Easter against Wigan and Huddersfield. That persuaded Woolf to leave his star names at home and begin handing out debuts to most of his Academy side. It ended in a 30-10 loss, one of only four suffered by Saints in 21 Super League outings so far in 2022.
Back to that inconvenient stat about Cas being the last team to win at Saints in Super League. That victory came in August of last year when tries by Welsby and Lachlan Coote were not enough to prevent a 20-10 reverse. Prior to that you had to go back over 30 years to October 1990 when a Saints side featuring Shane Cooper, Phil Vievers, Tea Ropati and Cas legend Kevin Ward went down 29-16 at Knowsley Road.
There was a somewhat more memorable meeting in 2021 than that August defeat. Saints took on the Tigers at Wembley in the Challenge Cup final on a baking hot day in July. The red vee claimed a first Challenge Cup win in 13 years thanks to a 26-12 victory made possible by tries from Makinson and Roby as well as the now departed duo of Theo Fages and Kyle Amor
The current Tigers side might consider Saints vulnerable and fancy their chances of what would still rank as an upset. They should certainly have taken some lessons from Paul Rowley’s Red Devils side in how to go about challenging Saints tactically. Yet with Woolf quietly steaming at hos players’ efforts at Salford and a huge influence returning in the shape of Makinson I’m backing Saints to turn their collective frown upside down and claim the win that would take them a step closer to a top of the table finish.
Squads;
St Helens;
1. Jack Welsby, 2. Tommy Makinson, 6. Jonny Lomax, 8. Alex Walmsley, 9. James Roby, 10. Matty Lees, 12. Joe Batchelor, 13. Morgan Knowles, 14. Joey Lussick, 15. LMS, 16. Curtis Sironen, 19. Jake Wingfield, 20. James Bell, 22. Ben Davies, 23. Konrad Hurrell, 24. Dan Norman, 26. Sam Royle, 27. Jon Bennison, 28. Lewis Baxter, 29. Dan Hill, 31. Taylor Pemberton.
Castleford Tigers;
2. Derrell Olpherts, 5. Bureta Faraimo, 7. Danny Richardson, 8. Liam Watts, 9. Paul McShane, 11. Kenny Edwards, 12. Adam Milner, 13. Joe Westerman, 15. George Griffin, 17. Mahe Fonua, 21. Alex Sutcliffe, 23. Greg Eden, 24. Cheyse Blair, 25. Suaia Matagi, 28. Brad Martin, 29. Sam Hall, 30. Sosaia Feki, 31. Gareth O’Brien, 32. Cain Robb, 33. Jason Qareqare, 37. Alex Mellor
Referee: Chris Kendall
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