A winning August continued as Saints eventually eased past beaten Challenge Cup finalists Hull KR on Friday night (August 18).
Paul Wellens’ team earned a fourth consecutive Super League win to stay in the race for a top two spot come the end of the regular season. Saints are now third, two points clear of Leigh Leopards in fourth and behind second placed Wigan on points difference only. The Warriors golden point win over Hull FC this week is a minor irritation which keeps them clinging to that advantage. The local rivals are both four points behind league leaders Catalans Dragons with five games to play before the playoffs.
Meanwhile Rovers - beaten in the gut wrenching circumstances of Lachlan Lam’s golden point at Wembley last week - missed the chance to move into the top six at what would have been the hugely amusing expense of Warrington. The Wolves were beaten again - well it was Sunday - albeit by just two points in a 24-22 reverse at Leeds. Wire are suddenly looking vulnerable after opening the season with eight straight wins. The Robins remain in the hunt for a top six berth despite the defeat. Willie Peters’ side lie seventh, with again only points difference keeping them behind both Warrington and Salford Red Devils.
Wellens again made changes to his line-up, some forced and some chosen. Jon Bennison’s last appearance was in the 14-12 home defeat by the Dragons in mid-July. Fit again after a slight injury concern he got the nod to start on the wing ahead of Tee Ritson. In the pack Matty Lees started a two-game suspension following another endless appeals saga. With Alex Walmsley and Agnatius Paasi gone for the year Morgan Knowles moved into the front row alongside emerging star George Delaney and skipper James Roby. James Bell was back from a one-game ban and slotted into the loose forward spot vacated by Knowles. Joe Batchelor was a substitute in last week’s win over Huddersfield Giants but was able to step into the starting line-up for this one at the expense of Sam Royle.
Rovers resisted the temptation to rest players following the physically and emotionally draining cup final experience. Elliot Minchella picked up a one-game ban following his sin-binning at the national stadium and so Dean Hadley was promoted to the starting 13. Former Leeds utility man Jimmy Keinhorst was drafted into the 17 and took a spot on the interchange bench.
Still without Konrad Hurrell and Will Hopoate in the backs Saints were very slow to find any attacking rhythm. The same could be said of Rovers in a flat first half not helped by the driving rain of a St Helens summer evening. The only points came from the boot of Mark Percival after a high shot on Delaney 20 metres from the visitors’ line, and from a scruffy looking try by Sione Mata’utia. But they all count, right?
Mata’utia was in the right place at the right time when Lewis Dodd’s dab through the defensive line was fumbled by Mikey Lewis and missed completely by Ethan Ryan. It was Mata’utia’s 12th try in 55 Saints appearances and his second of the season. Percival had walked straight off the field for an HIA after slotting over the penalty which opened the scoring which left Tommy Makinson to resume kicking duties for the moment. It was not a successful return to the role as his effort drifted so far wide of the right hand upright as he looked that it landed in the field of play.
Although the weather got worse into the second half the champions produced the exact reverse of the reaction you might expect. Percival returned from his HIA to show us exactly why Wellens has chosen to move him to the right hand side of the field to work alongside Makinson. It took just three minutes of the second half for a demonstration. Jonny Lomax broke out of the tackle of Shaun Kenny-Dowall to feed the England centre. With Makinson outside him Percival chose to firstly dummy Ryan Hall into the car park before laying the four points on a plate for his wing partner. Having been cleared of any further concussion issues Percival didn’t have to fight Makinson for the goal-kicking duties and duly stretched Saints’ lead to 12-0.
Mata’utia was the only Saint to carry the ball further than Percival’s 126 metres while the 29 year-old also claimed only his second assist of the campaign. Teaming him up on an edge with Makinson may be considered risky without either Hurrell or Hopoate as it leaves the other side somewhat vulnerable. Bennison and Ben Davies have always acquitted themselves well when they have stepped up to the first team but they have only 58 appearances between them at that level. Yet they do have Mata’utia to offer his considerable defensive steel if he can stay away from his regular scrapes with the Match Review Panel. Regardless, what it does offer Wellens is the opportunity to pair two of the league’s best attacking players on an edge which - as it was in this one - will often be enough to cause the opposition more problems than they can handle.
Makinson is in a particularly rich vein of form. His second try of this game - laid on by a slick combination between Lomax and Dodd - was his sixth in his last three outings and his 16th of the Super League season. Only Wigan pair Liam Marshall and Abbas Miski as well as top try scorer candidates Tom Johnstone and Josh Charnley have more in 2023. The five-time Grand Final winner has 186 tries in the red vee since his 2011 debut. Contracted to Saints until the end of 2024 he looks certain to become just the eighth player to cross for 200 tries for his only club.
Makinson’s second came after another member of our number grabbed his very first. Moses Mbye has only played four times since his arrival following the abrupt departure of Joey Lussick but is already starting to show his worth. There was a touch of good fortune about his first four-pointer for Saints as Rovers fullback Mikey Lewis fielded Mbye’s kick near the touchline before inexplicably gifting possession to Joe Batchelor. The back rower had the simple task of finding Mbye on his inside with a clear run to the line. It was easy in the end but it had been Mbye’s kick which had unsettled Lewis in the first place. You might argue that the former Queensland Origin man earned the rub of the green.
Along with his try Mbye made 25 tackles, had two kicks in general play which - for context - is more than any Saint except the halfback pairing of Dodd and Lomax. His ability to find grass with the boot, particularly from dummy half could prove a useful alternative to the incessant bombing still being perpetrated by Dodd.
Saints final try scorer on the night was Davies. His patience and unfussy commitment to the cause was rewarded late in the game when Mbye, Dodd and Lomax combined to put the 23 year-old centre over to the left of the posts. Percival couldn’t add the extras but having already notched a second penalty when Keinhorst caught Delaney high Saints were well out of sight. Davies now has a handy strike rate of 10 tries in 25 appearances.
KR did get on the board when Lewis - who had hitherto endured the kind of watery nightmare that Leo and Kate couldn’t have reenacted - followed up his own kick to fall over the line when Ryan got to it first and served up an offload. An offload which looked suspiciously like had been delivered from the ground with a Saints tackler in contact. But let’s not quibble too much. Rovers have had a rough week.
Along with Percival and Bell with 126 metres, Mata’utia was the only other home player to break 100. He managed 153 to go with his 12 tackles and five tackle busts. That the list of centurions does not yet include Delaney is instructive. It’s not exactly worrying, but the talk around Delaney as a short term answer to the absence of either Walmsley or Paasi is something we would do well to be a bit more careful with. Delaney has made an outstanding start to his Super League career but is not someone we should expect to carry the burdens of the pack at this stage of his development. Wellens seems to recognise this and the rationing of the 19 year-old’s minutes goes some way to explaining why we still await his first 100-metre game.
Saints’ top tackler was Bell with 27. The 16 errors committed by Rovers has something to do with the fact that no Saints man was required to top 30 defensive efforts. By contrast Hadley made 40 for Rovers, the other Batchelor - Joe’s brother James - came up with 35 while Kane Linnett had 33 and George King 32.
Going forward only Hall managed to hit 100 metres. The 35 year-old six-time Grand Final winner made 107 on a night when Rovers had few answers once their ability to keep the game tight defensively hit the buffers.
You wouldn’t know it if you were getting a soaking alongside me on the way back into town after the game but we are edging ever closer to playoff time. The run-in starts here and it starts with a trip to Castleford on Friday night (August 25). Cas have been abominably bad so far in 2023 but will be feeling a little better about themselves after their 28-12 win at Wakefield last time out. Wellens has named the same 21 for that assignment, knowing that a win is crucial for Saints to gain ground on whoever loses the meeting of Catalans and Wigan in Perpignan on Saturday night (August 26).
Something more like we saw in the second half of this one rather than the first will do very nicely.
Saints;
Welsby, Makinson, Percival, Davies, Bennison, Lomax, Dodd, Delaney, Roby, Knowles, Mata’utia, Batchelor, Bell. Interchanges: Norman, McCarthy-Scarsbrook, Maybe, Royle
Hull KR;
Lewis, Ryan, Opacic, Kenny-Dowall, Hall, Schneider, Milnes, King, Litten, Kennedy, Batchelor, Linnett, Hadley. Interchanges: Parcell, Storton, Keinhorst, Luckley.
Referee: Tom Grant
No comments:
Post a Comment