As expected it was tight, but Saints eventually broke Salford Red Devils’ resolve to make it through to a record-extending 14th Super League Grand Final appearance with this 19-12 win on Saturday (September 17).
It means that the champions will get the chance to win an unprecedented fourth Super League title in a row. Standing in their way at Old Trafford next week will be Leeds Rhinos - themselves veterans of 10 previous Grand Finals. They also happen to be the only other side to have won three back-to-back Grand Finals since the inception of the event in 1998. Saints coach Kristian Woolf has a chance to become the only head coach to win three in a row having led the club to victory in 2020 and 2021. Leeds’ three successes between 2007-09 came under two different coaches in Tony Smith and Brian McClennan.
For Salford it is the end of the road. Yet they can be hugely proud of their efforts. Just like their 2019 vintage they have defied the expectations of the outsiders and maybe even their own. Just like three years ago they have fallen short against Saints. After a fairly dismal start to 2022 which saw them win just three of their first 11 matches the Red Devils have been transformed by coach Paul Rowley in the second half of the season.
Whether the competition structure should enable a side starting so slowly to make it this far and potentially all the way to the title is a debate we will continue to have annually in September and October. The argument will intensify in this little corner of the world should the Rhinos win in Manchester. But coming into this one there were few who would have disagreed with the notion that Salford were the form team in the top flight. My pre-game nerves and those of much of the Saints fan base were genuine and justified.
A lot of those nerves stemmed from the continued struggle with injuries. The squad announcement on Thursday (September 15) did little to quell the anxiety. Treatment room staple Will Hopoate was not included, joining Alex Walmsley and long term absentees Lewis Dodd and Regan Grace on the sidelines. On the plus side Mark Percival and Sione Mata’utia returned. Come game day they formed an all new left edge in the three-quarters with Percival on the wing and Mata’utia at centre. Jon Bennison occupied the fullback role allowing Jack Welsby to join Jonny Lomax in the halves. Agnatius Passi started at prop for Walmsley.
Rowley’s side were closer to full strength but had to do without their most influential player. Arguably the most influential player in the league in 2022. Brodie Croft has been reviving his career with some outstanding performances in Super League this year after his rise to NRL stardom somehow hit the buffers. So much so that he is the newly crowned Steve Prescott Man Of Steel. Unfortunately for the Red Devils his brief loss of consciousness in last week’s playoff win at Huddersfield Giants cost him his place in this one due to concussion protocols. Chris Atkin stepped into the halves alongside Marc Sneyd.
Less than two minutes in Salford lost another key piece of their puzzle. Andy Ackers is many people’s choice as England hooker for the forthcoming World Cup. There is logic in that with James Roby not budging from international retirement, Josh Hodgson injured and Micky McIlorum being…well…Micky McIlorum. Ackers’ exit from the action was swift as he got his head in entirely the wrong place in attempting to tackle Bennison. Ackers was sent for an HIA from which he was not able to return. Bennison was perhaps fortunate not to suffer similarly given the reckless nature of Elijah Taylor’s part in the incident. He charged in at Bennison foregoing any thought to using his arms to wrap up the Saints fullback. Referee Chris Kendall chose not to even penalise Taylor for his effort which - while not conclusively high - was completed with the shoulder for the most part. The rules and interpretations change often but I’m amost certain that shoulder charges are still illegal.
Saints dominated early in both territory and possession. Yet there were signs from pretty early on that their functional, frills-free attack wasn’t going to find it easy to smash down the Salford doors. Morgan Knowles came up with a fairly basic error 10 metres out from Welsby’s pass before Mata’utia suffered a similar fate albeit with the Red Devils defence in somewhat closer proximity as he attempted to shift the ball on to Percival..
It wasn’t until Woolf’s side got to the last play and their short kicking game that they carved out a genuine scoring chance. Lomax was the architect, sending a low kick through the defensive line and into the in-goal area for the chasers on the right edge to run on to. First to it was Joe Batchelor, but when Kendall sent it up for review with an initial decision of no try the ruling was confirmed. The ball had just beaten Batchelor who could only catch up with it in time to ground it on the dead ball line. On the line is out.
Events later in the contest would spark a debate about whether Batchelor’s efforts should have been rewarded with a penalty try. There was no discussion between Kendall and video referee James Child about a penalty try even though replays showed that Sneyd had pulled Batchelor’s arm back as he gave chase. Given how close the ex-York man got to grounding the ball there were many Saints fans making the case that he would have got to the ball well in time without the intervention of Sneyd.
And he might. But could Child have been certain if it had been referred to him? Probably not to my mind. Batchelor did extremely well to get to it when he did. Without the benefit of hindsight I’m not sure you’d expect Batchelor to catch up with it at the time of the foul. The question is whether Child would have been able - in accordance with the law - to rule on it based on what I would suggest turned out to be an unlikely outcome. There should be a high bar for the awarding of a penalty try and this - along with the now notorious foul by Tommy Makinson on Tim Lafai which we will deal with later - is not it. It doesn’t help that most observers of a red vee persuasion have only raised it in response to the howls of derision from Red Devils fans over the Lafai incident. Then it just looks like whataboutery.
Happily, Batchelor didn’t have to wait long for a more favourable outcome. The methodology was pretty similar to the earlier near miss. Lomax again asked the question with a testing short kick which Batchelor was again first to respond to. It needed the approval of Child in the booth - and for whatever reason he took three or four looks at it - but Saints were up and running. Makinson landed his first goal of the day and Saints had a 6-0 lead which their dominance justified.
They could have added to that lead a couple of minutes later. Again Lomax was at the centre of it, finding Hurrell in space down the right. The ex-Leeds man handed it on to Makinson who looked certain to get away and either score himself or send a return pass to Hurrell who had continued his run. Yet the Saints winger was denied by a desperate ankle tap by Joe Burgess. It wasn’t quite of the magnitude of Josh Dugan on Kallum Watkins in the 2017 World Cup final but it was a try saver which at that stage arguably kept Rowley’s side in the game. Not many teams recover from double digit deficits at the home of the Saints. And so it was to prove the case again here. For now it was a vital interjection by the former Wigan flyer.
Yet not for very long. Only a couple of minutes later Lomax - turning in a stellar performance during which it seemed he was expected to do everything in this house as far as creativity in attack was concerned - provided Batchelor with his second. It seems strange to reflect that if a different referee (or the video referee had he been asked) had taken a different view of the earlier near miss then Batchelor could have had a hat-trick in the opening quarter of the game.
He was able to take Lomax’s pass and spin over for his second try. His 12th of the season in all competitions and his first double in Saints colours. It extended the run of games in which the 27 year-old has crossed the whitewash to three having done so in defeat at Wigan as well as in the home win over Toulouse which rounded off the regular season. The extra two was a tough ask for Makinson from a wide position but he didn’t blink and Saints led 12-0.
For all their dominance in that first 20 minutes Saints were still too reliant on Lomax, in particular his short kicking game. Perhaps that is understandable with only Lomax and Makinson playing in their correct positions in what would be considered Saints’ strongest back division if everyone was available. Yet it has also become part of their DNA under Woolf. Physically dominate through the forwards and then if the opposition stand up to it until late in the count look for Lomax - or sometimes Welsby - to create something at the back end of the set. Saints are literally grinding teams down at the moment. Some may be happy with it as long as the team wins. Others may feel it necessary in order to make sure that they do win. I don’t think anyone could argue that it’s nice to watch. If Woolf’s successor fails to emulate his results - and given Woolf’s incredible record there is a fair chance of a dip - I will miss the trophies and the glory. I won’t miss the tactics.
If Woolf had anything to do with the next major incident in the game then he can take that with him when he goes too. Having tackled Atkin Knowles’ inexplicably decided to grab hold of the Salford man’s arms as the pair tried to disentangle themselves from each other. The Saints man then proceeded to push Atkin’s arm up his back in the manner of Gripper Stebson trying to steal Roland Browning’s lunch money in Grange Hill. Perhaps I’m showing my age there.
Either way it was inexplicable, inexcusable grubbery from Knowles. If his Wigan namesake Mr Smithies had done something like that we’d be calling for him to serve a significant stretch at His Majesty’s Pleasure. Woolf opined that he would be ‘flabbergasted’ if Knowles were to be banned for the incident. His gast was well and truly flabbered when the Match Review Panel handed out a two-game suspension.
That means that Knowles will now miss the Grand Final following an unsuccessful appeal which defined the disciplinary’s new buzzword ‘frivolous’. That’s a shame but to my mind Knowles only has himself to blame. What are you trying to achieve by pushing someone’s arm up their back other than to cause some damage? Or steal their lunch money. And as far as the decision to appeal is concerned is this really who we are? Can we not leave the shithousing and villainy to the other lot down the road who specialise in it? In supporting the innocence or diminishing the culpability of Knowles we are swiping the moral high ground from beneath our own feet. Frankly this is no way for the leading club in Super League to behave.
Kendall wasn’t too enamoured with Knowles’ and promptly sent him to the sin-bin. It was the ex-Wales international’s third yellow card of the season. It also opened up a door for the Red Devils who gratefully passed through it in the very next set. Sneyd and Atkin shifted the ball right to Watkins before the former Rhino - a veteran of three Grand Final success and trying to get to a fourth - stepped out of the tackle of Welsby and had too much strength for Bennison as he dived over to put the visitors on the scoreboard. Sneyd’s conversion reduced the arrears to one converted try at 12-6.
The short kick to Batchelor’s side of the field was still proving profitable for Saints. If something is working then most would suggest you keep doing it. This time it was Welsby with the dab beyond the Salford try line where Batchelor just failed to ground the ball. Kendall was confident enough in his own judgement not to send it up for review and got it just about spot on. Batchelor did get a hand to the ball but bounced it on the ground rather than applying any downward pressure. A try then could have broken Salford’s resolve. They were hanging on by a combination of their own defensive desire and Saints’ lack of a cutting edge in attack.
And so to the other big disciplinary issue which has had rugby league fans - friend or foe - wagging their tongues in the aftermath of this clash. Sneyd flipped a ball to Atkin that might as well have had a big red cross painted on it like the flag of St George or the doors of the infected in plague-era London. It set Atkin up to be met with a juddering, bone-shaking, spirit-jarring bell ringer of a hit from Welsby. As big hits go it could not have been better timed. Welsby arrived at precisely the moment Atkin took possession of the ball which left the coast clear for him to tee off on the former Hull KR man. Atkin’s only aim was to avoid losing possession which to his credit he managed to do.
Since the hit those of a non-Saints persuasion have been calling for Welsby to be suspended and so sit out the Grand Final along with Knowles. There seems to be a fair amount of outrage at the fact that the Match Review Panel did not agree. They did charge Welsby - probably due to the fact that there was contact between his shoulder and Atkin’s head as the Saints star wrapped his arms around in a front on position. But if there is such a thing as incidental contact then this was it.
Apparently it was Welsby’s excellent disciplinary record - and not the fact that he made a very good tackle with some unfortunate accidental contact - which spared him from a suspension. He was found guilty of a Grade A offence but given no ban. All of which smells like a cop out from a body who didn’t want to ban a star player from a showpiece event if they can help it but didn’t want to be seen to be veering too far from their previous strict liability policy. It’s a compromise. Welsby avoids the ban he doesn’t really deserve but the MRP get to highlight the fact that they did notice the head contact and made a token gesture towards sanctioning it. If he does it again he’ll get banned. And there’ll be outrage from people who either don’t understand or can’t accept the disciplinary process.
Though Salford had got back into it through Watkins’ try they continued to struggle in the face of some monstrous defence from Saints. There were plenty of times when Sneyd found himself kicking from in and around his own 20 metre line as the Red Devils continually struggled to make good metres. When they did get out the AJ Bell Stadium side fluffed their lines. Watkins broke the shackles briefly but his pass to a temporarily unguarded Ken Sio squirmed from the grasp of the league’s second top scorer and into touch. Rowley’s men were making few chances and spurning those that they had. A combination which - as a blueprint for beating the top side in the competition - had a demonstrable lack of potential.
Saints were not exactly firing either. When Taylor foolishly stripped the ball from Hurrell’s grasp to concede a kickable penalty the champions opted to go for goal. An eight-point cushion at 14-6 seemed like a pretty handy advantage in what had hitherto been a clash not exactly over-flowing with try scoring opportunities. Makinson stepped up from 45 metres out but could not connect. The winger has kicked 71 of his 105 attempts at goal this season. That’s more successes than all but three others in Super League but more misses than anyone else in the competition. Much like Saints high error count - a league leading 306 - Makinson’s record is a consequence of having the goal-kicking responsibility for a team which regularly dominates opponents.
Errors further thwarted Saints as they looked for the score that would push them out of immediate striking distance. Roby was having a highly uncharacteristic struggle to hold on to the ball and distribute it with his usual faultless accuracy. Mata’utia was battling with the demands on his skill set which come from switching to the centres. So again it was left to Lomax to conjure up another opportunity - one which ultimately proved hugely influential mentally if not practically.
His kick to the in-goal was taken dead by Burgess inside the final minute of the first half. From the resultant dropout Roby moved into his natural habitat of dummy half and was on target with the pass to Lomax this time. Setting himself 30 metres out the Saints half struck his drop-goal attempt well, arrowing it between the posts as time ran out. Crucially, Salford were now 13-6 down and saddled with the psychological annoyance of knowing they needed to score twice to get back on terms or take the lead.
If Lomax was the chief string-yanker for Saints then Sneyd filled the vacancy for Salford. Early in the second half his incredible 40/20 attempt fell just inches short of setting the Red Devils up with what probably would have been their best attacking position since Watkins’ try. It also served as a reminder that the Red Devils remained a threat as long as they had Sneyd to guide them around, especially in the absence of Croft.
Still it was the hosts who would go closest to the first points of the second half. Welsby caused mayhem in the Salford defence before finding Sironen, whose offload found Lees charging towards the line. The recently capped England prop was held up short and could not resist stretching out an arm to promote the ball over the line. Kendall was wise to it and correctly whistled for a double movement. In so doing he denied Lees a try in consecutive games. The Saints prop had previously made 22 appearances without one prior to breaking his 2022 duck in the home win over Toulouse.
Welsby was next to try his luck, kicking ahead midway inside the Salford half before seeing the ball narrowly beat his chase to the dead ball line. Perhaps Saints were losing a bit of patience in attack, evidenced further by the one genuine boil on the backside of Lomax’s otherwise exemplary performance. And a costly boil at that. Trying to put boot to ball on another attacking kick Lomax instead took a rather clumsy looking air shot which fell kindly for Salford to recover.
Quickly, they shifted it left through King Vuniyayawa, Sneyd and Lafai to release Burgess down the left hand touchline. He had too much pace for anyone up in the Saints defensive line and when Bennison got across to cover there was Brierley on the inside to finish off a flowing move. He even had time to run around underneath the posts to make Sneyd’s conversion a formality. Suddenly that Lomax drop-goal was the only difference between the sides at 13-12,
Five minutes after Brierley’s try the Salford faithful almost saw their side go in front. Vuniyayawa just delayed his pass to Sneyd too long which meant that the Fijian was unable to avoid running around the back of Deon Cross. Sneyd had moved the ball on to Taylor who strolled over but the try was chalked off by Kendall. Correctly, as it turns out under the current interpretations. Kendall has had far, far more criticism from fans than his performance deserves - particularly on social media. But then what else is new? The game’s gone, after all. And it if you ask the average, in-no-way-biased rugby league fan the principal reason for its departure from wherever it is supposed to be is Kendall. Or Child. Or Robert Hicks. Or Ben Thaler. Take your pick.
Saints - champion side that they are - responded to this minor heart stop by marching down the other end of the field and scoring what was perhaps the game clincher. Lomax’s trusty, overworked boot found another probing effort into the Salford in-goal. This time it was not Batchelor but Bennison who steamed on to it despite having started his run several metres behind his veteran team-mate. The speed of Bennison’s chase must have caught out Sneyd and Lafai too. The pair appeared statuesque as the Saints stand-in fullback won the race to touch down with something to spare. It was his sixth try in his 17 appearances in the first team. And the most important by some considerable distance. Makinson was on target with the extras and with just 10 minutes to play there was breathing space again.
Saints could have sealed it had Hurrell and Makinson managed to be tuned into the same station when an opportunity arose. The Tongan centre found a bit of space out wide but his flicked pass out to Makinson on the wing only found touch. An error count of 13 is not huge for a team which has made more handling mistakes than any other in 2022 but it was higher than even their own average of 11.33 per game. It also goes some way to explaining why Saints relied so much on the boot of Lomax to create opportunities. It just wasn’t a day on which things clicked in the back division even on the relatively few occasions that it chanced its arm. That has plenty to do with the constant shuffling of personnel from 1 to 7 but in the case of Hurrell and Makinson they have spent almost the entire season in tandem on Saints’ right. This wasn’t the highlight of what has been a pretty fruitful link-up.
Salford’s big ‘if only’ moment arrived late. Sneyd managed to get another searching kick to stand up near the sideline just a few metres from Saints try line. Bennison was forced to take the ball out over the touchline to give Salford a try scoring chance with six minutes on the clock. They nearly took it. If you were to ask anyone of a Salford persuasion they would no doubt argue that they did. Sneyd was behind it all once more as his kick rolled into the Saints in-goal area. As Lafai began to chase it Makinson took the cynical decision to stop him in his tracks, grabbing hold of the Salford centre and pulling him back.
Kendall swiftly produced the yellow card for Makinson’s professional foul. Yet crucially, the referee chose not to award a penalty try nor even to hand it upstairs for further analysis. As much as this may not carry too much weight coming from a column dedicated to all things Saints I think he probably made the right call. The fact that fans and observers of all persuasions have been arguing about it since shows there is doubt about whether Lafai would have got to the ball.
The yellow card is right because it denied Lafai an opportunity to score. For a penalty try to be awarded the foul must deny a certainty in the opinion of the referee. Even if it had been handed upstairs and the video referee had felt differently than either Kendall or I, it seems unlikely that he would have considered that there was sufficient evidence to overturn. It’s a hard luck story for Salford and I get their frustration. And that of the rest of the league who are probably bored shitless with the concept of Saints in Grand Finals. But - as with the earlier call involving Sneyd on Batchelor - the right decision was probably made according to the laws.
The argument that Makinson would not have made the foul had Lafai not been about to score holds no water. Or to go all Joe Lycett on the matter it doth butter no parsnips. Makinson made the foul to eliminate the possibility of Lafai getting to it. Not because he was certain that he would. He made a split second decision not to leave it to chance. And he got what is the current sanction for it in a yellow card. No more to see.
Right or wrong it was an outcome which finally put Salford away. There was still time for Sio’s season to end in La La Land as he caught an accidental knee to the head from Lees. And for some more tiresome histrionics from Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook as he Smithies-ed all around the unfortunate Vuniyayawa when he was deemed to have made an error at the play-the-ball. It looked like less than legal pressure from the Saints prop from the two places I was sat. Inside the ground at the time and then again on my sofa the next day. The last desperate throw of the dice came when Sneyd’s crossfield kick deep inside his own territory found Burgess but his pass inside was knocked down by Lomax to end the game.
The best team won this game, despite Salford’s hard luck stories and some truly mind-numbing attack from Saints. Woolf’s side had far more possession and territory and were more dominant defensively than a seven-point winning margin suggests. With the added creativity of a Lewis Dodd they could have scored more points. But no doubt Salford fans will see our Lewis Dodd and raise us a Croft. Yet even he would have struggled to create during the first quarter of the game when the Red Devils could barely get out of their own 20m zone.
The stats illustrate Saints’ superiority. No fewer than eight Saints made 100+ metres. Leading the way with 170 was Bennison. Hurrell was a constant threat so long as he avoided trying to pass as he added 147. You’d expect nothing more than Makinson to be on the list with 132. Coming in on the unfamiliar position of left wing and knocking out 126 metres represents a decent return to action for Percival after a four-month layoff. In the forwards Sironen was the most impactful going forward with 136 metres followed by Paasi on 107, Knowles on 105 and Lees on 100.
For all that they fell short in this one Salford can be hugely proud of their 2022 efforts, particularly in the second half of the season. I have my own views on the question of whether a team which loses eight of its first 11 games should ever end up one game from a Grand Final. Yet the improvement in Rowley’s side throughout the second half of the year has been awesome. Their performances have been dazzling, giving the entire game a much needed shot in the arm after a seemingly interminable period of grinding, arm-wrestling and the bloody processes. If Rowley can keep this team together and keep improving it they’ll be a threat in 2023. But can he? Other clubs will have noticed the quality they have in their ranks? That’s always been Salford’s problem. See 2019.
For Saints it’s that 14th Grand Final, and a fifth against Leeds Rhinos. You won’t need me to remind you that the trophy has gone to Headingley on the other four occasions. But the last of those was 11 years ago. Makinson, Lomax, Roby and McCarthy-Scarsbrook are the only current Saints bearing those scars. Only Zak Hardaker featured for Leeds.
The history means nothing this week. Does it?
Saints; Bennison, Makinson, Hurrell, Mata’utia, Percival, Welsby, Lomax, Paasi, Roby, Lees, Sironen, Batchelor, Knowles. Interchanges: McCarthy-Scarsbrook, Lussick, Bell, Wingfield
Salford Red Devils;
Brierley, Sio, Cross, Lafai, Burgess, Atkin, Sneyd, Vuniyayawa, Ackers, Ormondroyd, Wright, Watkins, Taylor. Interchanges: Dupree, Gerrard, Bourouh, Luckley
Referee: Chris Kendall
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