One step forward…two steps back. That’s how it seems to be at the moment for Saints. After the Paul Wellens era began with the glorious World Club Challenge triumph in Penrith it has been a difficult first third of the domestic campaign for the new Head Coach. If we believed we had turned a corner with the stellar home win over Warrington a fortnight ago we were made to think again following a tame and often hapless performance in Perpignan.
The Team News
Only two changes were necessary to the starting line-up which blew away Warrington. You could make a case that both of those were positive and should have strengthened the side. On paper at least. Alex Walmsley returned from a three-game absence forced upon him by a hamstring injury. He went straight into the starting line-up with Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook reverting to his customary place on the bench. Also back was Tommy Makinson but it was Jon Bennison and not Tee Ritson who made way for the England winger.
That was tough on Bennison. He has been rock solid in his seven appearances so far this term. He deserved to keep his place just for the joy that was his try against Warrington which he created with a dummy which sent Matt Dufty to Tesco for a loaf. We will revisit that omission later. For now we will tidy up the team news by adding that Jake Wingfield also made the bench. It was his first appearance since the loss at Hull KR. With McCarthy-Scarsbrook already back on the bench seat which has his name carved into it, Wingfield’s return meant that both Lewis Baxter and Wesley Bruines dropped out of the 17.
Is This Now A Crisis?
I opened my review of the Warrington game by declaring that this was not a crisis after all. You couldn’t help but just feel better about things after a performance like the one against Daryl Powell’s side. Yet here we are - just 18 days on as I write - sitting seventh in the league on the back of losing a 12-point lead for the third time in 10 Super League outings.
We tell ourselves repeatedly that it doesn’t matter where we are now in early May or what sort of form we are in. That it’s all about how we are going in September when the knockout stuff starts. And that’s all true. But we are seventh. After a third of the season. The jarring reality is that if we continue in this vein then we are at severe risk of missing the playoffs. I need not remind you that Saints have never failed to qualify for the playoffs since they were reintroduced in 1998.
So is this a crisis after all? Maybe. But there are still 17 Super League games to play. Seventeen chances to cut out the errors and the indiscipline which have plagued us early in the season - never more so than in this ultimately shabby display. Last season the Salford Red Devils finished in that sixth and final playoff spot having lost almost as many games as they won. Fourteen wins and 13 losses. It is not going to require a massive improvement for Wellens’ side to sneak into the top six. And if they do who is going to want to play them?
If There Is A Problem, Is It Wellens?
He’s only 10 games in and he’s already a world champion, but still there are questions being asked about Wellens. Admittedly the interrogators are mostly housed on social media but those can often be the loudest voices these days. He’s picking the wrong team. The tactics are wrong. All the hits. Including the classically lazy comparisons with another local lad who became a rugby league legend but ultimately wasn’t up to it as a coach.
But let’s introduce a bit of perspective. The season - Wellens’ coaching career in fact - is just 10 games old. This is St Helens. Not Chelsea. You don’t call for the king’s head to roll just a few months on from the coronation. Especially not in a system which allows you to lose 13 games out of 27 and still be only three games away from a shot at the title at Old Trafford. Calls for Wellens to go are a show of impatience bordering on the hysterical. He has to be given time. This loss means that we have now won five and lost five of our 10 games to date. If he gets a couple of seasons and we are still losing as many games as we win then perhaps his position should be looked at. Nobody is arguing that this inconsistent, erratic form is acceptable for a club like Saints over the long term.
Until then I’m very much hashtag Wellens In. When he was appointed Saints signed up to having a Head Coach in his first role with that level of responsibility. He is a rookie learning on the job. In any case I suspect our form isn’t all down to his rawness. Maybe he has been the recipient of a bit of a hospital pass in taking over from the serial winner Kristian Woolf. Maybe - and we may well find this out over the course of the season - this is now a group of players among whom there are too many sliding downwards from their peak. Nobody can stay at the top forever. James Roby and McCarthy-Scarsbrook are both 37 years old. How many other sides have two 37 year-olds in their 17 every single week?
Six of the 17 on duty in this one are over 30. So is Agnatius Paasi who would doubtless have been in the squad had it not been for injury. It seems highly likely that over the next few seasons a rebuild of the squad will be needed. Fresh blood will be required to complement the brilliant youngsters we have brought through over the recent past. Bennison, Wingfield, Jack Welsby, Matty Lees, George Delaney and - if he stays - Lewis Dodd should provide a strong backbone for the team but maybe the time is coming to build new blocks around them. If a team is allowed to grow old together it can take years to recover from if you are not careful. Ask Leeds Rhinos.
So the only question that remains is whether Wellens is the man to oversee that rebuild. But those making decisions about his future knew that we had an ageing squad with a limited shelf life when they appointed him. Even if they didn’t envisage the squad starting to run on fumes this year. If they felt that the task of rebuilding was beyond Wellens then they wouldn’t have appointed him. I suspect they have rather more faith in him than those currently jerking their knees on Twitter.
Discipline Is Woeful
Now I know some fans have never seen a capable referee. That everything is a conspiracy because Bloody Chris Kendall is corrupt and/or Ralph Rimmer is bored of Saints winning and is on a mission to stop them. But those of us who reside in the real world know that these are rose tinted, defence mechanism excuses for bad discipline. Believe it or not Saints break the rules sometimes. Behave badly or petulantly sometimes. And - so it seems - never more so than during the opening months of this campaign.
No side in Super League has received more yellow cards in 2023 than Saints. We added another one to the collection here when Konrad Hurrell was invited to go for a rest five minutes before half-time for swearing at referee Liam Moore. Hurrell did so in response to the award of a Dragons penalty when Jonny Lomax was deemed to have arrived late on Adam Keighran.
There didn’t seem a lot for Hurrell to argue about. Not in the current climate where the degree of force is almost irrelevant. A late tackle is a late tackle these days even if he tickles him. The penalty set up the position from which Ben Garcia and Mitchell Pearce combined to allow debutant Matt Ikavalu to brush off Will Hopoate’s weak tackle to tie the game up at 12-12 at that stage. But it was Hurrell’s petulant stupidity which left Saints shorthanded and made the next play harder to defend.
Before that Saints had absorbed a lot of what Steve McNamara’s side threw at them. The only exception came just before the half hour when Artur Mourgue took Sam Tomkins pass on the half way line and raced away before stepping Welsby and going under the posts. It was a try reminiscent of one scored by Robbie Paul at Wembley in the Challenge Cup final in 1996. Younger readers may not know that Paul hasn’t always been famous for interrupting pre-game warm-ups with awkward on-field interviews. He was once a silky stand-off with explosive pace off the mark. Mourgue is very much in that mould and showed it on this play.
Prior to that Saints were hardly dominant but they had been clinical when they got their chances in attack. They had built a 12-0 lead, firstly when Walmsley took Roby’s pass, beat Julian Bousquet and breezed under the posts. Ten minutes later they doubled the advantage when Welsby took a brilliantly timed ball from a pre-sin bin Hurrell to ease over untouched. Two Makinson conversions seemed to have set Saints on their way.
Hurrell’s subsequent spell on the sidelines cost Saints eight points either side of half-time. A 12-6 lead when he departed had become a 14-12 deficit when he returned. The other two points came early in the second half after Sam Royle was whistled for escorting a Dragons player off the ball as it hung in the air from the boot of Pearce. It would have been Dragons ball anyway since Welsby dropped it cold. Royle - who is one of the individuals who has received the most criticism in the wake of this defeat - just gave the Dragons the option of an almost guaranteed two points to nudge them ahead. Keighran didn’t waste the chance and the Dragons went in front to stay,
By this time the game was 12 on 12 anyway after former Sydney Roosters forward Siosuia Taukeihao (easy for me to spell) was yellow carded for what Moore described as secondary contact with the head of Welsby. The fullback had just reeled in another enormous Pearce skyscraper before being blasted by Taukeiaho with a challenge that was suspiciously more shoulder than arm wrap and which bounced off Welsby’s body up to his head. Many won’t like it - including Sky fight fan Barrie McDermott who called it legal on commentary - but Moore was 100% correct with the call. We all know the reasons why this is a sin bin and I can’t fathom why so many continue to rail against it.
Royle’s indiscretion was one of eight penalties conceded by Saints on the night. That is around 2.5 more than their season average per game. Overall Wellens’ side have conceded 58 in their nine outings so far. That is just seven fewer than the 65 awarded against the league’s worst offenders Salford. But Paul Rowley’s side have played a game more than Saints. Discipline is a massive, massive issue for Wellens right now. And it’s not Bloody Chris Kendall’s fault. Or Liam Moore’s.
The Kill Shots
Having edged in front the Dragons set about the task of putting the game beyond the champions. They did so with two Tom Davies efforts. His fifth and sixth scores of the season. First he was put in at the right corner by the quick hands of Ikuvalu. A brilliant touchline conversion by Keighran crucially extended the lead to more than a converted try at 20-12. At that point things were starting to look a tad ominous.
All doubt was removed when another ex-Wigan man in Tomkins lobbed a perfectly weighted kick over the absent left edge defence of Saints to give Davies a simple task. Keighran couldn’t repeat the trick from the touchline but by that stage Saints had long since stalled as an attacking force and never really looked likely to claw back the 24-12 deficit.
The Ongoing Dodd Conundrum
Along with Royle, one of the strongest magnets for criticism in terms of individual performance is Lewis Dodd. It is fair to say that he hasn’t looked the player who lifted Saints attack to a different level before he was injured in the Good Friday derby in 2022. It was 10 months before he saw any further competitive action but since his return he has been a peripheral figure.
The injury is probably not the only mitigating factor in his perceived dip in form. Again some pin the blame on Wellens for allegedly coaching the flair out of him. Making him stick to the processes. Stay in the arm wrestle. Get in the grind. All the things that the modern coach loves but which bring me out in a rash. Besides, the change of coach is a hard sell as an explanation when you consider that Dodd’s previous boss was Woolf. He may be a serial winner but Woolf is a highly conservative coach who has no truck with maverick halfbacks. Get to the kick and then…well…kick is his mantra.
Dodd’s kicking game has been one of the key areas where he has fallen short this year according to his critics. Certainly in previous games he has veered dangerously into Theo Fages territory. Which means completely forgetting that you are capable of doing something unexpected and creative and just launching it as high as possible and hoping for a jittery fullback to get themselves on the end of it and begin flapping incompetently at it. Yet it may surprise you to learn that Dodd only kicked the ball three times in general play in this one. So if it is not the kicking and not the coaching, what is it with him? Why is he playing like Luke Gale after a night out with Jake Connor?
Well it could be his age. He only turned 21 a few months ago. Not many halfbacks are the finished article at Super League level at his age. The 20 year-old Sean Long who made his debut against Cronulla in 1997 was not the master of his craft that he became in later years. He looked like a pure runner but he developed. Not to compare Dodd to Long - who to my mind is the greatest halfback the Super League era has seen - but the point is that Dodd has time on his side. Assuming he stays.
Which brings me to the other possible reason that he may be struggling. A few weeks ago he announced that he had signed with an agency specialising in the NRL. He added that it was his intention to leave Saints at the end of 2024 when his contract runs out to sign for an NRL club. He didn’t specify any contenders. Whoever shows interest at the time, you’d assume. Perceived wisdom has it that he won’t attract an NRL club if he continues to play like he has in recent weeks. But I suspect that his decision to announce this intention now means he has already had what HR bods call ‘expressions of interest’ in his services.
And so he has made himself a target. When fans find out that a player wants away his every mistake, every mis-step is scrutinised to the nth degree. Some have even suggested letting him go early and finding a replacement now. A replacement like Mikey Lewis at Hull KR. He plays with a swagger and a confidence that we once expected of Dodd. As a result he is a joy to watch. Other observers have a less radical solution which is to sit Dodd in the stands for a few games to help focus his mind. I don’t know the young half at all but some players would respond to that sanction with the kind of toy throwing and dummy spitting which would almost certainly lead to an early exit in any case.
The prospect of removing Dodd throws Bennison back into the conversation. I told you we would revisit his situation. Many are advocating bringing him back in at fullback and moving Welsby into the halves alongside Lomax. There is a narrative forming that Welsby isn’t a fullback after all so moving him solves three problems. The one regarding his fullback play, the one about how to get Bennison back in the team and the one about what to do with Dodd. It might work but I must admit to being sceptical of the idea that Welsby suddenly is not a fullback. Woolf thought he was and that turned out alright.
Roby - A Bad Night Or Something More?
As every rugby league fan worth their sodium knows Saints have been truly blessed in the number nine position over the last 30 years. To have two genuine all time greats follow on from each other and for both to have such longevity is unheard of for any club. In many ways whoever follows next in that line is in an almost impossible situation. They cannot possibly be in the same stratosphere as Roby or Keiron Cunningham.
In turning out for this one Roby equalled Kel Coslett’s all time appearance record for the club which stands at 531. If he takes any part in the home fixture against Salford on Saturday (May 13) he will stand alone as the holder of a milestone which may never be broken. Not in our lifetimes anyway. Yet his performance in France has provoked tentative whispers among the fan base that he is not quite the force that he was. That he may even be becoming a weak link.
For those who missed it earlier in the piece…he’s 37. He should have retired at the end of last year but was eventually persuaded to stay on for one more year. It would not be all that surprising if the 20 seasons of medal-snaffling brilliance that he has given to us are starting to take a toll. Wellens only played him for 55 minutes of this one before throwing Joey Lussick into the fray. That may be a common strategy the rest of the way in 2023.
Roby was not his usual accurate self in his distribution but it was his defensive work which caused alarm to some. At one point he was barrelled backwards about five metres after attempting to stop one Dragon’s bullocking run. And get this…he missed three tackles. I know. Three. That doesn’t seem like a lot but when you consider the fact that he has only missed nine all season it is evidence either of decline or - more likely perhaps - a bad night at the office. Only…he never used to have those.
Roby is a legend who should be left to retire on his own terms no matter what happens in the rest of 2023. I trust him to know if he is consistently failing to reach the standard required. I can imagine that if he needs to be out of the team then he will be the one to tell Wellens, not the other way around. For now let’s stick with him and just wait until he shows us his worth again. That could be this coming weekend. But if not. - and even if the Red Devils wipe the proverbial floor with us - we should celebrate his brilliant, masterful 532 game Saints career.
I’m sure that this time he will be retiring even if the doubters are wrong and he is peerless for the rest of 2023. If and when he does, how best to fill that now poisoned chalice of the hooking role at Saints? Unlike many I don’t think Lussick is terrible. I just think he’s steady. Like one of about 30 off the peg hookers knocking about in the NRL. Another one of those is a recruitment option for next year. Remember it is possibly the start of the rebuild and number nine will be a priority without Roby unless they start trusting Taylor Pemberton. There have also been links to Daryl Clark of Warrington and even Kruise Leeming who has only just gone to the NRL to join our man Justin Holbrook’s Gold Coast Titans. Leeming is there because he fell out with Leeds Rhinos coach and Ryan Giggs lookalike Rohan Smith. That may or may not be a red flag on Leeming.
In the meantime enjoy Roby while you can. Even if he turns out to be in genuine decline and becomes less relied upon.
The Stats Bit
Any time he is on the field for Saints Walmsley invariably provides the most go-forward. This game was no exception as he ripped off 132 metres. What is more surprising is that only two other Saints topped the 100-metre mark. They were Lomax (100) and another favourite target of the fans Hopoate (103). This highlights just how much the currently absent forwards are missed. How much more of a platform would have been laid and how much better would Saints have defended after that encouraging first 20 minutes had Morgan Knowles, Sione Mata’utia and Sironen been available?
The Dragons had similar problems getting the ball downfield. Mourgue was streets ahead of his team-mates (and he even edged Walmsley to be the game leader) with 141. Ex Wigan man Davies came up with 117 to go with his try double while Mike McMeeken had 103.
Saints’ top tackler was Lees with 32. He leads all Saints over the season with 374. That is still only good enough for 12th overall in Super League. Perhaps that’s a good thing. The more tackles you are having to make the more your opponents must have had possession. Yet if you take into account the one game in hand that Saints have Lees could end up higher. Another 32 tackle effort in that game in hand would place him in the top seven. Joe Batchelor was the only other Saint to top 30 with his 31. Garcia is currently 10th on the Super League list and was the only Catalans player over 30 in this one with a game leading 37.
If we are looking for reasons for this loss in the stats then perhaps the most telling one is the error count. Saints averaged just over nine handling errors per game coming in yet came up with 15 in Perpignan. McNamara’s side made only one fewer with 14 on a night when the ball spent a lot of time on the ground. Yet it was still an absorbing contest right up until that conversion of Davies’ first try which made it a two score game and seemed to knock a significant amount of stuffing out of Saints. The excitement generated before that perhaps shows that you don’t need an error free game to have a quality spectacle. Risky passes and hapless fumbles create drama and I would campaign for them any day over set for set stalemates.
But this current Saints outfit is built differently to many that have gone before it. It lacks the pace and the flair of those vintages. It relies on keeping possession and keeping the ball out of the hands of the opponents in order to control games. Fifteen errors indicate that it demonstrably failed to do that here.
Next Up
Don’t expect things to get any easier for Saints when they welcome Rowley’s Red Devils this weekend. Like Saints, Salford have lacked a bit of consistency this year, winning seven but losing four of their first 11 matches. Yet they come to St Helens on a three-game winning streak. They won well at Leeds on Friday and edged the Dragons at home before the international break. They have also beaten Castleford on that run but yeah…who hasn’t? Andy Last’s side would be just that - last - if it weren’t for the horror show that has been Wakefield Trinity in 2023 so far. Trinity are one of only two sides beaten by Cas so far this term, the other being that benchmark for inconsistency Leeds Rhinos.
Saints can take encouragement from their home form. Just one of the five losses so far has come at home. I know…Leeds fans. No need to write in. In addition to returning to home comforts Saints will hope to have a few more troops back. That will not include Knowles who still has one game to serve of his five-match suspension. The England game counts as one of those apparently. Let’s hope for better news on Sironen who was a late withdrawal in France, The availability of Paasi and Mata’utia would be a most welcome boost too. The timescale for the latter’s return is unclear following the concussion he picked up at Wigan on Good Friday. Yet even if only one or two more come back it will put Saints in a better position to compete up front in a way they didn’t quite seem capable of in Perpignan.
The Salford visit has turned into a fairly big game. The idea that a meeting of seventh versus fifth has arguably more on it at this juncture than a top of the table clash doesn’t sit well with me but that is where we are. Defeat for Saints will leave them four points behind Rowley’s men and have them looking nervously over their shoulders at the Rhinos and even Huddersfield and Hull, all of whom currently sit just two points behind Wellens’ side. Potentially we have further to fall if we don’t get the win this weekend.
Should that happen the noise from the terminally impatient will only get louder.
Catalan Dragons:
Mourgue, Davies, Keighran, Ikuvalu, Johnstone, Tomkins, Pearce, Dazaria, Garcia, Bousquet, Whitley, Seguier, McMeeken. Interchanges; Taukeiaho, Navarette, Ma’u, Chan
Saints:
Welsby, Ritson, Hopoate, Hurrell, Makinson, Lomax, Dodd, Walmsley, Roby, Lees, Royle, Batchelor, Bell. Interchanges: McCarthy-Scarsbrook, Wingfield, Lussick, Delaney
Referee: Liam Moore
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