Saints suffered a third league defeat in seven Super League games as they went down 14-6 to Wigan on Good Friday (April 7).
It’s a loss that leaves Paul Wellens’ side fifth in the table after the Easter round and which lifts Matty Peet’s men into second after Catalans Dragons lost at home to Warrington in a wild one on Saturday (April 8).
The Team News
It hasn’t been quite the start to the domestic season that Wellens would have liked in his first year as Head Coach after stepping into the shoes of triple Grand Final winner Kristian Woolf. Wellens made two changes from the side that had blown Wakefield Trinity away 38-0 a week previously. Sione Mata’utia returned from the head knock he sustained at Huddersfield in March while Agnatius Paasi was back in the line-up and was given a rare start with Alex Walmsley out for a month with a hamstring injury. Mata’utia’s presence sent James Bell back to the interchange bench after he had started the last four. Young front rower George Delaney kept his place on the bench.
Wigan had a problem in their halfback department with both Cade Cust and Jai Field out injured. Peet surprised many by naming Joe Shorrocks at stand-off alongside scrum-half Harry Smith. It turned out to be something of a masterstroke. Perhaps Peet’s shrewdest move since he hit upon the idea of finger buffets for league hacks to keep them all on side throughout the season. Shorrocks was arguably the best player on the field. He just kept showing up like Michael McIntyre. He was infuriating.
Peet also welcomed Liam Marshall back after he had missed last week’s win over Leigh. This allowed Toby King to move back inside to centre after playing on the wing last week.
The Dodd Debate
Saints’ early forays into Wigan territory were a bit too predictable. In particular the kicking game, where Lewis Dodd stuck with a plan which involved sending the ball as high into the Wigan sky as possible and hoping for a mistake. Yet none of the Warriors’ back three of Bevan French, Abbas Miski or Marshall seemed unduly stressed by the aerial assault. There has been much discussion on social media around Dodd, with some fans suggesting that Jack Welsby should move into the halves to replace him for a spell with either Will Hopoate or Jon Bennison filling in at fullback.
All of which seems a bit knee-jerk for my tastes. Certainly the young half has not looked the same player since he came back from the Achilles injury which ended his season in last year’s Good Friday derby. There is no denying that the kicking was all a bit Theo Fages. Bomb after bomb. I thought we’d seen the end of it with Dodd’s promotion to the first team. But what if this is coached by Wellens? It doesn’t seem logical to me that Dodd - a player of such ingenuity - would suddenly decide for himself to start launching it at every opportunity. Maybe he is acting under orders. If I thought the tactics were conservative under Woolf then I do worry about the direction in which they are currently heading. I’m not worried about Dodd. Yet.
Neutral Refs?
It took nine minutes for Wigan to take the lead. Saints can consider themselves a little unfortunate that Matty Lees was penalised by Wigan whistler Liam Moore for an alleged interference on Sam Powell at the play the ball. There seemed to be nothing in it. Quite why the authorities would appoint anyone from either Wigan or St Helens to officiate this fixture perplexes me. Moore is not bent or dodgy and there is no conspiracy. But he is on a hiding to nothing trying to referee this one.
Any questionable decisions in Wigan’s favour and our pitchforks are out as we scream bias. Any questionable calls in Saints’ favour and the other lot are running over the hill shouting about referees going out of their way to avoid looking like they might be in any way biased. Moore is probably the best referee in Super League at the moment but I don’t think this was necessarily his best day. And just because he’s the best doesn’t mean he is the only capable ref. The standard is much higher than the ‘game’s gone’ brigade would have you believe. It’s just that there are a few rules in the game now which those people don’t like. Maybe just appoint someone else next time?
Hurrell And That Defence - Again
The decision to penalise Lees gave Wigan the field position from where Jake Wardle got outside Konrad Hurrell all too easily from Smith’s pass and then was able to turn it back inside for Smith to cruise over for the opening try. It was another stark example of the defensive weakness in Hurrell’s game. He left a gap between himself and Tommy Makinson which was as wide as the East Lancashire Road. Hurrell just doesn’t have the pace to recover if he leaves that much space. It remains a weakness which player and coach need to continue working on.
Missed Opportunities
Saints slowly grew into the game but a theme started developing around spurning some very presentable chances. Makinson went close but the real howler came from a scrum play near to the Wigan line. Jonny Lomax chose to hit Mark Percival with a short ball when a wider ball to Welsby would have created a two-on-one with the fullback and Hopoate against only Miski. Hopoate - who suffered his first loss in his modest 16 starts for Saints in this one - would have walked in. Assuming that Welsby agreed that the Tongan was better placed.
Saints paid a price for that wastefulness on the scoreboard as the indiscipline which has plagued them in the early weeks of the season struck again. It is not only Hurrell who wanders in defence. Again it appears to be a deliberate strategy for the centres to jump out of the defensive line to try to shut plays down before they develop. Yet on this occasion Percival neglected to wait until French had received the ball before smothering him and was duly penalised. There is anticipation and then there is Tom Cruise in Minority Report, running around preventing crimes from happening and arresting people for the thought of committing them. Which they may not even have had yet.
Compounding that error, Mata’utia was pinged for stealing the ball from a Wigan player in a two-man tackle deep in Saints territory. There was no good TV angle offered of this incident, a fact which will no doubt inspire someone on Twitter to suggest that Sky hid the evidence because everyone hates Saints. Regardless, Smith stepped up to pop another two points over and Wigan led 8-0.
So about those missed opportunities. Hurrell showed all his positive qualities when his deft offload put Makinson through a hole five minutes before half-time. The England winger had French to beat. But that isn’t exactly easy and to be fair to Makinson he didn’t have much in the way of support. Saints’ support play pretty much stank the place out all afternoon. Yet what Makinson could have done is take the tackle of French and wait for what TV cops call back-up. Have a little patience as Gary Barlow once crooned. Instead he chose to try and make enough space away from French on the outside to execute one of his trademark flying finishes. Yet French didn’t come down the Irwell in a bubble to paraphrase another TV cop, so with the help of Marshall was able to force Makinson into touch.
And that wasn’t all before the break. Next to try his luck was Jonny Lomax. Unfortunately, the talismanic Lomax was having one of those days on which deciding which sock to put on first would probably have been met with disastrous consequences. Having dummied the Wigan defensive line into the next postcode Lomax tore down the field. This time Saints had both Dodd and Welsby in support. It looked a simple case of drawing enough of French’s interest in making a tackle and then just handing it on to one of the supporting duo with a free run to the line. Yet Lomax’s pass only found the retreating Liam Farrell who was able to get a hand to it before it was picked up by a grateful French. Full credit to the Wigan back rower for not giving up on the play but the inability of our three main ball players to fashion a score between them in that situation was a grim indicator that this might not be our day.
An Endless Tennis Rally
You have probably seen me complain before about the interviews with assistant coaches that our favourite evil empire broadcaster has taken to conducting either side of half-time. My fury at this was at a new level when Saints assistant coach Laurent Frayssinous got on the mic to inform us that what we wanted to be doing was going set for set with Wigan. I don’t know. I just feel like maybe the coaching staff would want a little bit more when you’re 8-0 down and wasting chances at an alarming rate. If you go set for set at 8-0 down for the entire second half you lose 8-0, don’t you? Or am I missing something? The grind seemed to be the plan. Rugby league’s version of an endless tennis rally. It left me hoping that the players hadn’t listened to a word at the break and instead just looked down at the badge on their shirt and reminded themselves of what was required.
A Familiar Story
As it was Wigan scored next. When it came about just over 10 minutes into the second half it did so in a way we have definitely seen before this year. Mata’utia has been suspended for late tackles more times than even the keenest Saints historians can keep track of. He seems to either lack the capacity to learn or else decided that it is somehow a price worth paying for the opportunity to stick one on somebody. I won’t pin this one on Wellens. It happened under Woolf and it would happen if we were coached by Snow White. It’s just a thing he does that we all have to live with until he comes to an agreement to do it back in Australia for an NRL club. Which can’t be that far away.
This time he did it to Shorrocks but not with sufficient force to take Wigan’s surprise irritant out of the game. All that was achieved was another Wigan penalty from which the ball was worked right to allow former Warrington and Huddersfield centre King to stroll through another huge gap in the Saints defence. This time it was Percival stepping in to try and help Dodd on his inside. Unfortunately Hopoate - who to be fair isn’t around much to discuss these things - didn’t get the memo and so stayed out wide with Miski to create the gap. Another Smith conversion put Saints in a 14-point hole.
Another Questionable Call
I mentioned that Moore didn’t have his best day. Perhaps his most baffling and maddening moment came five minutes after the King try. Hurrell had found a bit of running room and was heading straight at former Leeds Rhinos liability Brad Singleton. Fully aware that he wasn’t going to be able to run with him Singleton decided that the best way to stop Hurrell was to clout him square in the nose with a subtly disguised swinging arm.
Moore saw it. It would be impossible not to without special issue Wigan goggles. He even gave a penalty. Where it went wrong for him and us was in his decision not to show Singleton at least a yellow card. The explanation coming through the mic was that Singleton had smashed Hurrell in the face with an open hand. Like Will Smith at the Oscars. The hand was open, that I can get on board with. But the amount of force applied and the point of contact on Hurrell’s anatomy made it a certain yellow by any sensible measure in today’s climate. And in any case part of Singleton’s arm made contact too. Surely this renders open hands irrelevant? It could have been red.
Dodd Change-Up Brings Hope
Despite being down 14-0 and in danger of doing a Wakefield, Saints kept going and were rewarded on the hour. It might be a coincidence that Jonny Lomax’s try came about as a result of Dodd’s first low kick close to the Wigan line but that seems a stretch. Perhaps a bit of variety in the kicking game - particularly close to the opponents’ line - makes things a little more tricky for a defence. Up until that point the only low kicks going into the Wigan danger area had been unconvincing, half-botched efforts from Welsby.
On this occasion Dodd delivered a perfectly weighted grubber into the in-goal where Lomax won the race to touch it down. Percival chipped over the extras and the lead was back to just eight points at 14-6. We had a sniff. Never Write (Note: not ‘right’) Off The Saints and all of that. And at least we were not going to do a Wakefield. Saints haven’t been nilled since a 19-0 loss to Warrington in February 2020. Shortly after the whole country shut down amid the arrival of Covid-19. We don’t want any repeat of that kind of zoom quiz, empty stadia, pyjama sales boosting dystopia.
Back To Missed Opportunities
Curtis Sironen seems the sort who would be especially vulnerable to an outbreak. He’s already caught the Mata’utia late hit bug (although in his case it might be hereditary from his father) and now we saw him afflicted by the germ which causes players to make bad choices and so butcher any chance of scoring. The former Manly man poked his head through the Wigan line and had the opportunity to send Hurrell on one of those rampaging runs for which he remains in the team. Hurrell still had a lot to do to score but he would have set up a more than decent attacking opportunity. Into the last 15 minutes by now we may have seen Wigan wobble at 14-10 or even 14-12. But Sironen declined to release the pass and the chance disappeared.
Four minutes later what felt like the final dagger arrived. Again Dodd was involved, sending up what I would describe as more of a lob than a bomb toward Miski. Makinson got there first and tipped it back to Morgan Knowles. The Saints loose forward went low for the corner and seemed to have got there to score his first try of 2023 and his 29th as a Saint. The first three TV angles shown looked good. It wasn’t until we saw the head on shot from behind the dead-ball line that the full horror of Knowles’ mistake became clear. He lost it. Clear separation without regathering possession before it hit the ground. No try.
The commentators were at pains to give the credit to the defence and I am sure that the ubiquitous Shorrocks was involved somewhere. Or I could just have been hallucinating by then. I was on some pretty heavy drugs in the hospital recently and it just felt like I kept seeing Shorrocks wherever I looked. He was probably pulling pints behind the bar. When I then found out that he’d played for Leigh in their win over us in March he was starting to haunt me. Shorrocks or no Shorrocks however, Knowles had to score. It was a lack of concentration. Of attention to detail. Of exactly the sort of minutiae that Saints’ title winning run over the last four seasons has been built on.
Before the next, final blow to our hopes there was a worrying incident involving Mata’utia. With Wigan pressing for a score which would have removed any doubt about the outcome the Saints back-rower decided to hit Wigan prop Ethan Havard with everything he had in an attempt to force an error. It was a shuddering, sickening collision after which the Saints man came off by far the worst. He looked totally unconscious initially, and the game was held up for 10 minutes while the medical team attended to him and then put him on a stretcher.
We haven’t yet been given much detail about his condition beyond the fact that he sustained a neck injury which will keep him out of this week’s visit to Hull KR. Best wishes to him for a speedy recovery.
When it came - with two minutes left - Saints final chance to salvage something from the wreckage of this derby involved Knowles again. Bell was off the bench by now and he put Knowles through a gap down the Saints left. Again the support play was lacking. Knowles appeared to get a little spooked or confused by this, spinning what the Australian commentators call a bludger of a pass straight into the arms of a relieved you know who. Joe. Fucking. Shorrocks. He really was everywhere. Which will teach me not to laugh next time Wigan or anyone else plays a back rower at stand-off. It seems that sometimes you really can bring a knife to a gun fight and not only survive but win.
The Stats Section
Metre making was not a problem for Saints. Makinson was top dog in this category with a whopping 195 metres, with Welsby not that far behind on 192. Hurrell chipped in with 172 while the much maligned Hopoate managed 166. Lomax (115) and Percival (112) also topped the century mark. These efforts were all the more important as Paasi and Lees offered just 45 and 36 respectively, which was never going to make up for the loss of Walmsley. He averages a tick over 100 metres per game in his six appearances so far in 2023. We need more from the front row.
Wigan’s best was the 148 gained by French. Other than the fullback all of Marshall (141) Miski (115), Kaide Ellis (113) and Farrell (107) made handy contributions.
Saints’ defensive leader was again Lees with another 47 tackles. Knowles had 40 with James Roby just one behind on 39. Sironen offered a decent shift also with 36. Gurning grub Morgan Smithies was the Warriors’ top defender with 42 tackles while Havard made 38 and Kai Pearce Paul 37.
Saints’ 10 errors is about par for them but perhaps the most worrying element of that story is that Welsby came up with four of those. By contrast Wigan were a little more careful in possession - and let’s be honest they enjoyed less of it - making only seven errors. That time out of possession explains why they managed only six offloads to Saints’ 12. Welsby and Makinson made 7 of those between them.
Next Up
Things don’t get very much easier for Saints. They go to Hull KR this Friday night (April 14). They will certainly do so without Mata’utia which should offer an opportunity to Bell. Hopefully the much missed Joe Batchelor is not too far from a return either.
Rovers will be full of that great intangible known as confidence after walloping city rivals Hull FC 40-0 in their Good Friday Disagreement. That came on the back of an excellent win over Leeds a week previously. Willie Peters’ side are currently above Saints in fourth position in the league table but a win by 12 points or more for the champions will see that change.
There was a time when Saints struggled at the home of the Robins but they are now undefeated there since a 24-22 reverse back in 2015. Last season a hat-trick from Makinson and braces for Dodd and Mata’utia helped Saints to a 42-8 win which also saw Walmsley cross the whitewash. It is early in the season still - and in this competition structure this is not a crisis - but a win is needed for confidence and belief as much as for points on the table.
Wigan: French, Miski, King, Wardle, Marshall, Shorrocks, Smith, Byrne, Powell, Cooper, Farrell, Pearce-Paul, Smithies. Interchange: Havard, Singleton, Ellis, O’Neill
Saints: Welsby, Makinson, Hurrell, Percival, Hopoate, Lomax, Dodd, Paasi, Roby, Lees, Mata’utia, Sironen, Knowles. Interchanges: Delaney, McCarthy-Scarsbrook, Lussick, Bell.
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