Hull KR 26 Saints 14 - Review

A depleted, ever so slightly floundering Saints suffered a fourth defeat in eight Super League outings with this 26-14 reverse to Rovers at Sewell Group Craven Park.

It was a second consecutive loss for Paul Wellens’ men after last week’s 14-6 derby disappointment at Wigan. It’s also a result which leaves Saints a lowly eighth in the Super League table albeit with a game in hand on all but one of the sides above them. Defeat at home to league-leading Warrington Wolves this Thursday (April 20) would leave the four-in-a-row champions 10 points behind the Wolves a third into the season. In terms of defending the League Leaders Shield it would probably not be our year at that point.

By contrast Rovers’ good form has seen them leap up to third. Only the Wolves and Wigan are looking down on Willie Peters’ side now as they continue the improvement made under previous coach Tony Smith. This win was the Robins’ fourth in a row with Wakefield, Leeds and Hull FC - now under the guidance of Smith - having all left encounters with Rovers empty handed in recent weeks. Their last defeat was a 26-12 loss at Catalans Dragons in mid-March.

The Team News

There’s little doubt that Peters’ side were helped by the team selection forced upon Wellens. The new coach and legendary former fullback was without no fewer than four of his six regular starting forwards and two more key pack men off the bench in Curtis Sironen and Agnatius Paasi. Alex Walmsley is out with a hamstring problem while Sione Mata’utia suffered a second concussion in as many games at Wigan. Morgan Knowles served the first of his five-match ban for an alleged hip drop on Mike Cooper which the disciplinary panel decided was instrumental in the former Warrington prop suffering a season ending injury. To top all of this off Joe Batchelor is still out following ankle surgery. All of which left just skipper James Roby and prop Matty Lees in their regular starting roles up front. 

To solve this very probably unsolvable problem Wellens had to get creative. Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook made a rare start to complete the front row beside the remaining regulars while Sam Royle came into the second row for only his sixth start in his 13 Saints appearances to date. He was partnered by Mark Percival, switched from left centre in a move that had many fretting about the fragile body of the man who turns 29 in less than a fortnight. But worry not. Percival played for Saints under Kristian Woolf and now Wellens. He - like all of our outside backs - is often used as a battering ram in any case. There may have been justified concerns about the increased defensive load but in attack Percival’s brief would be very similar. James Bell was the man chosen to fill Knowles’ shoes at loose forward. 

With Percival deployed elsewhere Will Hopoate moved inside to the centres and Jon Bennison made his first appearance since the 14-12 win at Huddersfield on March 23. Hopoate was making his fourth consecutive start, a streak twice as long as his next best effort since joining at the start of 2022. The rest of the back division remained unaltered with Jack Welsby at fullback, Tommy Makinson on the right wing and Konrad Hurrell partnering fellow Tongan Hopoate in the centres. Jonny Lomax and Lewis Dodd continued their halfback combination though it seems that the latter’s ordinary form could be due to a mind that is elsewhere as much as any perceived restrictions placed on him by Wellens.

It may be negative but I suspect most knowledgable Saints fans feared the worst for this one as soon as the 21-man squads were named 48 hours before kick-off. If winning was not quite Mission Impossible then it was as close as makes little difference. Mission Highly Improbable. The standard of Super League may not be to the taste of endless bleating NRL aficionados but that doesn’t mean you can rock up with no pack and be confident of beating a Rovers side that is now full of quality. And so it proved despite the fact that Saints were probably the better side for large swathes of the first half without ever really threatening to send the scoreboard operator into a spin.

The Dodd Situation

Talk of the NRL brings us back to Dodd. For now he is the creative fulcrum. If he doesn’t play well then the whole of the attack suffers. And wouldn’t you just know it…? He’s not playing very well. You have to allow for the fact that he is only recently back from a serious injury and maybe there is an element of Wellens keeping the shackles on and - some say - applying them a shade tighter than even Woolf had. Yet Dodd’s performances must be due in some part at least to the moves he is making behind the scenes to get out of Super League and out of Saints. He hasn’t gone down the Luis Suarez route of biting anyone yet but watch this space. Last week we heard that he had signed with an NRL agency and tasked them with finding a club for when his Saints contract runs out at the end of 2024. Now we hear that Dodd has informed the Saints hierarchy - in particular tribunal bothering CEO Mike Rush - that he will definitely leave the club at the end of that contract. So can we infer from that information that Dodd’s agency has found him a club? Or at least an offer or two? I doubt very much that he would burn his bridges otherwise.

The whole thing has echoes of Kyle Eastmond’s Saints exit. Albeit without the v-signs and the bird-flipping. Both are talented halves who seemingly chose to move on before they have really achieved anything at Super League level. Both have shouted their intentions loudly from the rooftops well in advance. There is bound to be a faction of the support which takes umbrage at this approach and makes their feelings known. And if a deal has been done or is imminent then it is almost impossible to devote 100% of your focus to the club you are moving on from until that move takes place. It’s potentially a weird sort of limbo. There is a good argument for moving on from Dodd sooner rather than later if he really has made other plans beyond 2024. And not just because Jack Welsby isn’t exactly putting on a clinic at fullback at the present time.

A Fleeting Glimpse Of Flair

Back to Sewell Group Craven Park where Saints took the lead after a tight opening. It was a fantastic movement which was something of a poke in the eye for those who say Wellens has made the side more conservative. Roby, Lomax and Percival combined to find Hopoate in the left channel. His dummy to Bennison on his outside was a thing of beauty before he was then able to find Lomax on his inside with a free run to the line. Playing in the back row doesn’t stop Percival kicking goals and he added the extras for a 6-0 lead.

This was the undoubted highlight of the Saints performance. You might say that they peaked early. Like Macauley Culkin or Musical Youth. Had Bennison not been forced touch in-goal soon after Wellens side might have grown in confidence enough to go on with it. Instead it was Rovers who were next to get on the board. They wasted on opportunity when Parcell made an error at the play-the-ball 20 metres out. But on their next raid Mikey Lewis’ lob had the usually assured Makinson in a flap. It needed a combination of Lomax and Welsby to bat it dead to concede a goal-line dropout. That gave only temporary respite as in the resultant set Parcell and Abdull combined to give Lewis the opportunity to go over for Rovers’ first try. With support on his left he feinted to pass before easing over. Almost in the way that we have seen Dodd demonstrate in the past. That version of Dodd existed not too long ago but right now it feels like a long time since he played with that freedom. Or apparently that commitment. Lachlan Coote is a triple Grand Final winner with Saints but was not about to take pity on his old friends, slotting over the extras to tie the game at 6-6.

Stubborn Resistance

Yet it wasn’t the Lewis try which broke Saints. At that point they were still well in the game. This was underlined when they went back in front.  Still considering expansiveness as a viable option, Saints could have added a second try when Lomax put Hurrell away down the right. He kicked ahead for Makinson but an awkward bounce forced the winger to put boot to ball also. He was then surprisingly beaten to it by Abdull who was relieved to concede the dropout. 

There was another opportunity from a series of dropouts forced by Saints but Roby uncharacteristically failed to spot that a scoring pass to Jake Wingfield might have been on. It was a strange evening for Roby who gave way to Joey Lussick fairly early on in proceedings. Hopefully that was not due to injury but instead a decision by Wellens to protect the skipper. Or else to just try something different with Lussick who would surely have many more minutes under his belt were he not understudy to one of the genuine greats of the Super League era. 

So instead of adding another four or six Saints had to settle for nudging ahead by only two. Matty Storton came up with a sloppy handling error to gift Saints the field position and when Parcell was penalised for a ball steal it provided Percival with the straightforward task of notching his second goal of the game.

Discipline Starts To Crumble

Whatever your thoughts are on the latest Knowles suspension row it is difficult to deny that an inability to stay within the rules has been costing Saints this season. No side has received more than the one red and four yellow cards dished out to the men in the red vee so far in 2023.  There was further evidence of this ongoing flaw in the champions’ make-up as they allowed Rovers back on level terms. 

Firstly George King was taken high before Lees approached the task of stopping Storton with a little too much vigour. Despite the claims of some the available clip does not seem to prove that the challenge was carried out with the shoulder or that it involved any contact with the head. What it does demonstrate fairly clearly is recklessness from Lees. As Lees walked off to serve his time in the sin-bin Coote accepted the gift 30 metres out and the scores were level again at 8-8.

To my mind Lees has to do better in this situation. He knew that along with Roby - who as we have seen didn’t last all that long - he was one of only two regular pack starters on duty. He cannot afford to be getting himself sat down for 10 minutes. Just make the tackle. It is not necessary to put Storton in the stand. What is the thought process? An attempt at intimidation? To show how hard you’re trying? Lees is an international player now and needs to set an example. The days when you could forgive his over-enthusiasm turning into recklessness when he first broke into the team are over. We can bleat at referees and offer up crackpot conspiracy theories all we like. We need to be more disciplined especially in the current personnel crisis. Actions like Lees’ are a serious hindrance.

Fortunately for Lees and for us the disciplinary panel has spun the wheel of justice and decided that Lees will not serve a suspension. Which is handy when you’ve got more injured forwards than fit ones.

Another Kick In The Head

Coote’s penalty goal was the last action of the opening half.  The second half introduced itself politely before taking another big boot to Saints’ metaphorical nether regions. Wingfield - who was only just returning after a month-long absence - left the scene after appearing to collide with one or both of Royle and Bell while attempting to make a tackle. It was getting to the point at which Wellens might have asked for volunteers to play in the pack from the Saints fans on the terraces. 

Downtown…where all the lights are bright…

Now…who knows what a downtown penalty is? I must admit that I didn’t before referee Ben Thaler pinned one on Saints here. I have since discovered that a player is ‘downtown’ if he or she is in front of the kicker in general play and then goes past the point of the previous play-the-ball before the ball passes him or her. Is that clear? Me neither. Petula Clarke never had this sort of trouble downtown. Everything was great there.

I am not about to suggest that Thaler made the wrong call but what I will say is that I can’t remember ever seeing this called before in nearly 40 years watching the game.  That we should get hit with it now - in this game and in the current injury crisis and form slump - is entirely in keeping with how things are going. I should think next week we will get pulled up for feeding the scrum or not playing the ball with the foot. After which Lees will receive a four-game ban for whistling on a Tuesday.

A downtown penalty is one of those which are given away while in possession. A cardinal sin for any side let alone the four-in-a-row Super League and current world champions. And of course it lead to a Rovers try. Lewis was again the scorer, latching on to Abdull’s grubber to touch down. There was a suspicion that the Robins halfback may have ran around the back of Sam Luckley in the build-up but it was the sort of call you can only hope to get if the game is on TV. 

The obstruction rule is an entirely different beast without the presence of the broadcaster and it is unlikely that Thaler even considered disallowing it. Part of me is glad about that. Pedantic obstruction calls have ruined many a televised game as talk of inside and outside shoulders no doubt boggles the mind of the casual viewer until they switch over for Emmerdale. But boy…could we have done with getting that call. As it was the try stood and Coote’s goal gave the home side a 14-8 lead.

Old Boy Twists The Knife

He’s not the reason we’re eighth in the league this season but Coote did manage to inflict a fair amount of damage on Saints soon after. There was a period in which both sides completed well and in Abdull and Dodd took it in turns to launch bombs at opposing wingers and fullbacks, all of whom stood up well to the test. Saints blinked first, wasting an opportunity given to them when Jez Litten came in late on Lomax. It was Royle whose handling let him down just when Saints were looking threatening in Rovers territory. 

That freed up Peters’ men to serve up their champagne moment of the match and all but put the child-proof cap on the win. It was our esteemed former fullback twisting the knife. The hosts produced a thrilling, flowing move down their left in which all of Abdull, Lewis, Kane Linnett and debutant Corey Hall got hands on the ball. Just as the latter was about to be dragged into the front row of the stand he hurled the ball back in play in a fashion which was in truth slightly desperate.

Yet his luck was in. Abdull latched on to it and threw it back inside. At which point Lussick threw out an instinctive hand to try to stop the pass finding a red shirt but succeeded only in parrying it back into his own in-goal area. It was a gift for Coote who beat everybody else to it to touch down for the score which all but killed the game. When he got up to pop over two more points the win seemed even more assured for his side who now led 20-8. 

Game Over

Chances were becoming rare for Saints and when they did get one they set fire to it spectacularly. They were within range as back to back high shots by Rovers had them defending their own line. Yet Dodd’s simple pass to Lees was put down by the prop. A quite amateurish moment which served as a metaphor for the absolute state we seem to be in at the moment. 

Rovers didn’t need asking twice to march down the field, putting a little sauce on the top of their victory when Litten was first to Parcell’s neat kick into the in-goal area. Another Coote goal stretched the home side’s advantage to 26-8 and condemned Saints to a first defeat to the Robins since 2015. 

Scant Consolation

Coote is human, and he proved it by making the proverbial dog’s dinner of Makinson’s short restart. That lead to a period of Saints pressure in the Rovers half which the Robins struggled to deal with. Corey Hall flapped at another Dodd grubber before Rovers were caught offside on the first play from the restart. That allowed Lussick to crash over from dummy half for his seventh try in Saints colours. Which when you consider he has only made 10 starts in his 41 appearances is a decent strike rate. Another Percival goal closed the gap to 26-14.

A comeback never seemed that likely even though there were further chances for the visitors. Makinson was bundled into touch by Coote and Dodd was repelled when he could possibly have found Hopoate or Tee Ritson in space on the left. Yet for the most part Rovers were happy to concede a few penalties and run down a bit of clock before the hooter confirmed their winning pay. Is that still a thing?

Are The Problems Tactical?

Frequent social media users may have noticed the insidious beginnings of an anti-Wellens movement among sections of the fans. On the back of four consecutive Super League crowns and a world title they are smart enough not to be shouting too loud, but there is certainly disquiet about the way that things are going post-Woolf. 

I must concede there have been some games during which I have worried that our attacking game-plan might not be up to the job of continuing that winning run. At Leigh we pitched a tent and lit a barbecue in the Leopards’ half without ever really threatening to press home that territorial advantage and turn it into enough points to win. Eventually, inevitably, we were bitten on the backside. 

Yet I’m not sure that accusation can be levelled at the team in this one. They were arguably in an impossible situation given the absentees yet managed to have much the better of that first half and produce some enterprising stuff. The Lomax try in particular was a joy. For my money the difference between the style of play under Wellens and that under serial winner Woolf is just that. Winning. Most fans only tend to worry about aesthetics if the methods are not producing wins. It was this that did for Keiron Cunningham. However, Wellens has coached nine competitive matches. His job should not be under discussion nor any great scrutiny. It is just possible that this is a squad which could do with some regeneration and that it may have encountered some of these bumps in the road even if Woolf had chosen to stay on.

Despite the grumbling in the background this is not a crisis. I can’t remember the last time Saints were as low as eighth in the league but there are mitigating factors as we have seen. Besides, even if there were not - if eighth was the sum total of the achievements of a fully fit squad at this stage - there would still be no cause for panic. The six-team playoff format and the fact that the Grand Final winner takes it all leave Wellens with plenty of time and opportunity to turn this ship around. 

The Stats Bit

Nothing illustrates the weakness of the available Saints pack like the fact that Lees was the only member of it to gain more than 100 metres. Yet even his 110-metre effort was dwarfed by Hurrell’s 141 as he was again the most dangerous ball carrier as he had been at Wigan. The centre was a menace to the Rovers defence seemingly whenever he received possession. Percival had a crack in his unfamiliar position and managed a credible 98 metres of his own.

Rovers fared no better in this department as a combination of errors and solid defence held sway. Linnett was the Robins’ top forward with 96 metres while only the two Halls - Ryan and Corey - topped a century with 153 and 118 respectively.

Bell and Lees took the bulk of Saints’ defensive workload with the former leading the way with 42 tackles and the latter close behind on 40. Nobody else hit 30 for Saints but with Knowles absent and Roby used more sparingly perhaps that’s no surprise. An honourable mention to Lomax who juggled his role as the main attacking brain with a 27-tackle stint going the other way. Linnett and Parcell were involved in 37 each for Rovers while Elliot Minchella and Dean Hadley both managed 35.

Saints made only nine errors compared with 12 committed by the hosts. That is right about the average per game in 2023 for both sides. However those figures are quite low when you consider that there were so few offloads. Rovers average around nine per game but managed only five. Saints are a 10 per game outfit but their tally of four is perhaps evidence of a more cautious approach. Certainly of a less confident one.

Next Up…

So we have four wins and four losses from our eight games. We are at what American sports broadcasters would annoyingly call ‘500’. That’s a 50% win/loss record to you and me. So what would you least like to happen now? How about a visit from the league leading Warrington Wolves on Thursday night (April 20)? 

Wire’s bid to remain invincible went down in flames on Friday night as Wigan left the Halliwell Jones with a 13-6 win. Even amid the noise around one or two dodgy interpretations of what constitutes grounding the ball for a try it is difficult to make a case that Daryl Powell’s side were hard done by. Wigan were deserved winners, casting doubt on whether it is Warrington’s year after all. 

Like Saints the Wolves have their problems in the forward pack going into this week’s clash. Chief among which is the suspension handed to Paul Vaughan this week. Vaughan has been arguably the form prop in Super League in 2023 since making the move from Canterbury Bulldogs, yet they will have to get by without him for this one. As well as that Joe Philbin will serve the second of his two-match suspension following the win at Catalans over Easter, while Gil Dudson sits out the second of five matches he was handed for his senseless punch on a prone Tom Johnstone in the same game.

It looks set to be something of a phoney war in the trenches then with Saints set to still be without some major pack presence. Knowles remains suspended and Mata’utia will doubtless need more time after his head knocks. There is a squeak of a chance that Batchelor could return but hamstring problems are still likely to keep out Walmsley and Sironen. 

A win would be a huge confidence booster for Saints, injecting some much needed belief into certain sections of the fan base. Yet I have to level with you and say that it doesn’t look all that likely. Things may get worse before they get better. Now is the time to keep the faith, however. Nothing is won or lost in April. Not in this system. 

Hull KR;

Coote, Kenny-Dowall, Opacic, C Hall, R Hall, Lewis, Abdull, Kennedy, Parcell, King, Hadley, Linnett, Minchella. Interchanges: Litten, Storton, Luckley, Halton

Saints:

Welsby, Makinson, Hurrell, Hopoate, Bennison, Lomax, Dodd, Lees, Roby, McCarthy-Scarsbrook, Percival, Royle, Bell. Interchanges: Lussick, Wingfield, Delaney, Ritson

Referee: Ben Thaler