See, I told you we always win at Warrington, didn’t I?
We’ll obviously get to the specifics but for now the headline is that Saints got the win they needed. The champions remain in the conversation for the League Leaders Shield but perhaps more realistically a top two finish, a week off and a home semi-final. The final round of regular season games all take place on Friday night at 8.00 (September 22) with Saints, Wigan and Catalans Dragons all locked on 38 points with 18 wins and seven losses from their 26 games.
The biggest barrier to a top two spot for Paul Wellens’ side is the points difference situation. Wigan’s 48-6 demolition of Castleford Tigers this weekend leaves them 129 points better off than Saints in that department. Leeds Rhinos’ second consecutive gutless humiliation - a 61-0 defeat to Steve McNamara’s side - means that Saints have 62 points to make up on the French side too. In all likelihood we are going to need one of the other two to lose. Both if we have any designs on defending the League Leaders Shield. Wigan go to Leigh on the final night. Hope comes from the fact that Adrian Lam’s side probably need a win to guarantee a home playoff by finishing fourth. Hull KR are breathing down their necks and go to relegated Wakefield in the final round.
All of which might make Warrington’s own playoff situation more relevant to Saints than any of us are comfortable with. This defeat leaves Wire grimly clinging on to the sixth and final ticket to the post season festival. It’s a straight shootout between interim coach Gary Chambers’ Wolves outfit and Salford Red Devils after the latter lost 12-0 at Rovers. Should Saints finish behind both Wigan and Catalans and Warrington hang on in sixth then the pair will be set for a playoff rematch, albeit in St Helens rather than at the Halliwell Jones. Though they didn’t get over the line in this one Warrington’s second half performance in particular may have given them some much needed belief.
Saints welcomed back Curtis Sironen after a five game absence with a hamstring injury. It was a slight surprise that Wellens chose to insert the former Manly back rower into the starting line-up and drop James Bell to the bench. However it’s a 17-man game these days and Bell would be as prominent as ever. George Delaney was out due to concussion protocols so Sione Mata’utia moved to the front row and Morgan Knowles reverted to his more familiar loose forward role.
Warrington were without George Williams due to a thigh problem so Leon Hayes came in for just his third first team appearance. Matty Russell returned on the right wing, replacing Josh Thewlis after a six-game absence while Sione Mata’utia’s brother Peter was ousted by Connor Wrench at centre. Future Saint Daryl Clark started ahead of Danny Walker who was on the bench. He was joined by James Harrison as Jordan Crowther started.
It was a pretty fast start from Saints before the side’s attacking humdrummery set in. It took Sironen just 11 minutes to make his mark on his return. To that point Saints’ only raid on the Warrington line had ended when Joe Batchelor was caught on the last a couple of metres short. That would become a theme, but before then James Roby fed Jonny Lomax whose well timed pass allowed Sironen to get past Josh Drinkwater and run over Matt Dufty to open the scoring. It was Sironen’s first try since the Challenge Cup quarter-final win over Hull FC in June. Mark Percival was on target with the conversion and Saints led 6-0.
Eight minutes later Percival was adding to his points tally. The England centre broke through the 1,000-point barrier for Saints recently and took six more when he converted his own try. Jack Welsby was the provider, throwing a fake for the defence and then a short ball for Percival to crash over on the right. Roby, Lomax and Knowles were also involved in sweeping the ball right towards Welsby who grabbed his 27th assist of the season. Only Bevan French has more in Super League in 2023.
And that was about as good as it got offensively for Saints for another 61 minutes. We saw more evidence of what now appears to be a hard boiled belief that merely having possession in opposing territory will yield enough points to win games. That rather like my graduation all those years ago, it’s just a matter of hanging around in the right place for long enough. Having the now joint best defence in the league has seen Saints past most opposition this year but against the very best teams at playoff time they are going to need something more.
Though they dominated possession in the first half Saints took their territory is everything philosophy to extremes. They were caught in possession on the last tackle no fewer than four times in the opening 40 minutes, albeit close to the Warrington line on each occasion. By the time Moses Mbye was held up short of the line on the last inside the final 10 minutes it was starting to look like a deliberate ploy. It was like watching Huddersfield Giants’ Wattoball but demonstrated by a team which can actually defend.
Saints have been a team which very much plays the percentages since Justin Holbrook left. The difference is that under Kristian Woolf they found enough attacking tools in the bag to stay ahead of the competition. Under Paul Wellens and his assistant ‘Long Game’ Laurent Frayssinous there are not as many difference makers to rely on to provide that moment of inspiration to pick the lock. No Lachlan Coote or Kevin Naiqama, and nobody with the terrifying pace of Regan Grace. The burden of creativity is almost exclusively on Welsby and Lomax, with even off the cuff contributions from Lewis Dodd rare since his ruptured achilles.
There is mitigation in that there are important players still missing through injury. The absence of Alex Walmsley and Agnatius Paasi inevitably gives Saints less of a platform for the backs to play off. And with Konrad Hurrell still out injured the attacking left edge of Ben Davies and Jon Bennison is markedly less effective than the right edge pairing of Percival and Tommy Makinson. The more experienced pair carried the ball 26 times for 168 metres between them while over on the left edge Bennison and Davies combined for 19 carries for 111 metres. Both Makinson and Percival managed a clean break where neither Bennison nor Davies could. At least until Hurrell returns the opposition knows where the wide threat is coming from.
After the break that solid Saints defence got a real workout as the hosts started to dominate. As well as young Hayes acquitted himself during that period there might have been significantly more trouble brewing had Williams been there to lead his side around. We haven’t seen the best of him so far in what has been a difficult spell at Warrington but let’s not forget that the now England captain is a special talent. There aren’t too many British halfbacks who can say that they have ripped it up in the NRL in the way that Williams did at Canberra Raiders until the Wiganers’ pandemic known as homesickness took hold. Even the Sainted, Groundskeeper Willie bearded Sam Tomkins struggled with that task when he left Wigan for New Zealand.
Williams or not you have to give enormous credit to Saints for some of the defensive plays they pulled off on the night. Welsby is more familiar with taking on the bulk of the attacking responsibilities but here the result might have been different were it not for his defensive qualities. Most notably when during a rare first half Warrington raid he put Russell into touch just a metre or so from the Saints line. Hayes, Clarke, Crowther, Drinkwater and Dufty were all involved in creating the space for the winger but Welsby held his run intelligently to avoid being beaten by a step inside and then - to use a technical term - absolutely banjoed Russell into the first row of the stand.
It was not only timely but one of the most perfectly executed interventions of the season. This was a point missed by Sky Sports outrage generator Phil Clarke who reckoned that a hit on Makinson just minutes later by Saints’ new Clark was the tackle of the season. It was a good hit by the hooker and it dislodged the ball but it was not a particularly difficult tackle to be in a position to make unlike Welsby’s earlier effort. Perhaps Clarke is just caught up in his own time loop again. After all he did predict that Salford would reach the Grand Final a good 20 years before they did it.
On the subject of Clarks let’s take a closer look at how our Roby replacement got on against his future employers. He scored Warrington’s only try on 55 mins when he barged past Batchelor and Matty Lees. He also made 78 metres on nine carries, had two clean breaks and five tackle busts while also finding the energy to make 36 tackles. If that’s the standard then despite the fact that it’s virtually impossible for the succession of legendary Saints hookers to continue the position looks in decent hands for at least a couple of years.
That score got Warrington back into the argument at 12-6 and was actually the product of a rare technical mistake by the Saints defence. The danger looked over when Matty Ashton was bundled into touch in the left corner by a combination of Welsby (again) and Lomax after the Wire winger was put into space by Dufty. That movement originated from a Warrington scrum from which referee Jack Smith ruled that Saints had broken too early. It was from that resultant penalty that Clark posted his four-pointer, converted from in front by Stef Ratchford.
There were other key moments too like Makinson snaffling a Ben Currie pass which otherwise would have found Ashton close to the Saints line. Like Welsby’s prevention of a Walker 40/20 attempt which the Pimms drinkers at the World Cup Of Kicking would have regarded as out and out witchcraft. And like the slightly fortuitous obstruction call which saw Matty Nicholson penalised for failing to get through the defensive line and instead making contact with Dodd to create space on the right edge.
Nicholson could perhaps have done more to get through the line but the fact that Dodd wrapped his arms around the back rower tells me that the Saints halfback knew that drawing a penalty was his only route to avoiding the concession of what at that point could have been a crucial try. You can argue that it was clever defending from Dodd and it is certainly true that most champion teams possess a level of defensive nous which can at times veer into dark arts. But I’m sure Warrington fans would describe it as something other than clever.
Moments before that episode Bennison had adopted a similar mentality to averting danger. He held on to Nicholson’s shirt for just long enough to prevent him from being in the spot that Wrench thought he ought to have been when he tore down the Saints left edge with four minutes left. As a consequence of Wrench’s poor execution and Bennison’s intervention the ball went behind Nicholson and the chance was gone. Unlike Dodd, Bennison didn’t get the backing of the officials and was promptly sent to the sin-bin. Effectively sent off given the short time remaining by that stage. He had at least slowed Nicholson’s progress from far enough away from the Saints try line to make any talk of a penalty try fanciful.
There was one more bone of contention which ultimately set up the position from which Mbye iced the victory. Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook carried the ball into contact from Joe Philbin only to see the it squirm out of his grasp to raise home hopes of a last chance to attack. Only replays showed that Paul Vaughan had joined the tackle just before the ball came free, rendering Philbin’s stripping of the ball illegal.
It turned out to be one of the worst minutes of Vaughan’s Super League stay so far - which is a big call about somebody who plays for a team as hapless as Warrington. Today it emerged that he is facing a potentially season ending ban for lifting Sione Mata’utia off the ground as the Saints man engaged in one of the slowest attempts to regain his feet since - spoiler alert - the climactic slow motion scene in Rocky II. Among his many suspensions since his arrival at Saints Mata’utia has experienced what happens if you make even a gentle attempt to ‘help’ a recently tackled opponent up off the floor when he has gone into full Chris Joynt at the 2002 Grand Final mode. Loathe as I am to use that fan buzzword ‘consistency’ history is not on Vaughan’s side on that one. Excuse my whataboutery.
And to top all that the Wire prop, Super League’s leading metre maker and probable Steve Prescott Man Of Steel candidate then had to look on helplessly as Mbye shimmied between Nicholson and Walker to score his second try as a Saint and put the top hat on a triumph which in truth had been sealed from the moment Vaughan put a hand on McCarthy-Scarsbrook. Percival’s third conversion was post hooter amid wild celebrations with the travelling fans. Holbrook masks optional in the wake of his recent u-turn on replacing former Wire coach Daryl Powell.
Moving to prop maybe helped continue Mata’utia’s run as Saints’ leading metre maker. The ex-Newcastle Knight racked up another 162 on 19 carries. Joining him over the century mark for Saints were Makinson (103) along with Lomax and Sironen (both 102). Batchelor put in the most defensive efforts with 38 tackles with Bell and Lees both recording 32 and Roby 30.
No Wire forward reached 100 metres with Vaughan contributing an underwhelming 55 metres on nine carries. Clark’s 78 was the best the pack could muster. The real ground was gained on the wings with Ashton making 137 and Russell 136. Nicholson led all tacklers with 43 while Crowther also reached 40. Along with Clark’s 36 Harrison weighed in with 30 on a busy if not quite challenging enough night for the Wolves defenders.
And so to Hull at home next week where only a Ben Stokes-like cricket score will give Saints a top two shot unless one of the current incumbents wet the bed. It should be a comfortable win given that FC’s interest in their 2023 campaign ended some time ago. Despite the brilliance of Jake Clifford the black and whites haven’t improved as I’d expected them to after they appointed Tony Smith as head coach. Apparently their reluctance to take themselves seriously as the Super League contender they should be is strong. Currently too robust even for a coach good enough to win trophies with Warrington and to do most of the leg work involved in turning Hull KR into the cup finalists and playoff team they are now. He’ll get it right if Adam Pearson doesn’t lose patience and sack him in a TV interview first.
But probably not in time for Friday night at the home of the world champions.
Warrington: Dufty, Russell, Wrench, Ratchford, Ashton, Drinkwater, Hayes, Mikaele, Clark, Vaughan, Currie, Nicholson, Crowther. Interchanges: Kasiano, Philbin, Harrison, Walker
Saints: Welsby, Makinson, Percival, Davies, Bennison, Lomax, Dodd, Mata’utia, Roby, Lees, Sironen, Batchelor, Knowles. Interchanges: McCarthy-Scarsbrook, Royle, Bell, Mbye
Referee: Jack Smith
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