February
Entering his first season as Saints Head Coach following the departure of Kristian Woolf Paul Wellens had a lot to live up to. Woolf had won the Grand Final in each of his three seasons in charge before agreeing to return home to become Wayne Bennett’s right hand man at new NRL venture the Dolphins. Woolf’s third title was Saints’ fourth in a row having started an unprecedented era of dominance with the 2019 victory over Salford Red Devils masterminded by Justin Holbrook.
So no pressure then on Wellens as fans, media and part time scribblers alike threw around phrases like ‘Drive For Five’. But first there was the small matter of a world title to compete for. As the Super League regular season began for the other 11 clubs Wellens took his side to rainy Sydney to face Penrith Panthers in their own back yard.
Ivan Cleary’s outfit had won back-to-back NRL titles but had never been crowned world champions. Beaten in 1991 by Wigan and in 2004 by Bradford Bulls they were hoping that the third time would be lucky. Meanwhile Saints were going for a third title having been victorious in 2001 and 2007, both at the expense of Brisbane Broncos. Yet neither of those wins came on Australian soil. Wigan remained the only British club to go down under and claim the title. And that had been in the pre-Super League days in 1994. This was a chance to make history.
Saints went in with 15 of the 17 who had secured that fourth consecutive Grand Final win five months earlier. Jon Bennison was unfortunate to miss out this time but his omission allowed Jack Welsby to revert to fullback and Lewis Dodd to return at halfback. Dodd had missed most of 2022 after rupturing his achilles in the Good Friday derby with Wigan. If the Australian public didn’t know who he was before kick-off they would by the end.
Joe Batchelor was the other unfortunate soul to miss out having picked up an injury in a warm-up game against St George-Illawarra Dragons. Offsetting that loss was the return to fitness and to the starting lineup of Alex Walmsley who had not featured in the 2022 run in. The England prop was also injured in a derby, picking up a foot problem which would rule him out of the World Cup. With 18 players active for each side due to the inclement weather James Bell was also included.
A flowing move started by James Roby put Saints in front. Roby had intended to retire at the end of 2022 but had put it off for one more rodeo. If he stayed fit he would be on course to break Kel Coslett’s all-time Saints appearance record which stood at 531. This was game number 523 of a career entering its 20th season. None of his smarts had been lost during that time and when he found Jonny Lomax the stand-off drew enough attention to put Curtis Sironen through the line. He showed great composure to find Welsby in support for the game’s opening score. Tommy Makinson’s conversion made it 6-0.
Saints stretched the lead through Konrad Hurrell. The Tongan had been a surprise hit since joining from Leeds Rhinos and never was he more popular than when he sliced between Australian international Isaah Yeo and Tayvon May to put Saints 10-0 up. Despite Makinson’s failed conversion Wellens’ tenure had started ideally. It was one of Makinson’s final acts on the night as he was withdrawn due to concussion protocols shortly after. The Saints winger didn’t seem best pleased about leaving a game of this magnitude but chances are no longer taken with players’ health.
A 10-point lead became 12 in the second half when Mark Percival - taking over the kicking duties from the departed Makinson - converted a penalty awarded when Nathan Cleary was late on Lomax. The Panthers got on the scoreboard when Welsby - who had been immense to that point - switched off sufficiently to allow Izak Tago to touch down Cleary’s angled kick. His conversion brought the Panthers back within six at 12-6.
Two minutes from immortality Saints offered the Panthers a lifeline. This time it was Stephen Crichton doing the kicking as his skyscraper eluded Welsby, Brian To’o was the beneficiary, touching down before Cleary’s extras took the game to extra time. Which is where Dodd came to the fore.
He’d had a couple of failed attempts at a drop-goal in normal time but when Saints gained possession 30 metres out from Jarome Luai’s mistake the Saints half had his best chance yet. Roby’s pass from dummy half was predictably accurate as was Dodd’s execution of the winning point. Dreamland. Wild celebrations, crestfallen opponents who had been a lot more invested in the concept than some of their national media.
The problem was that there was a whole season to play. How do you top winning a world title? Perhaps by winning a fifth Grand Final in a row, so banishing the memory of losing five in a row between 2007-11.
Which brings us on to Castleford away. The start to the league campaign was quite the come down from the glamour of a World Club Challenge. Tee Ritson replaced Makinson and scored on his Saints debut after arriving from Barrow. Bennison came back in for Will Hopoate and Roby was rested as Joey Lussick was given a rare start. Bell earned one too in place of Sironen.
As well as Ritson’s effort Walmsley grabbed a double and there was another for Welsby in a 24-6 win. The comedy material wrote itself for the travelling fans in the immediate aftermath of Joe Westerman’s appearance in some amateur pornography set in an alley near a branch of Gregg’s. Not forgetting the hilarious brain explosion which saw Bureta Fairamo deny himself and his side a consolation try when his arm hit the ground touch in-goal with no Saints defender in sight.
March
This is where things began to get a little tricky. Looking back on it now there’s a pretty convincing argument to be made that results in the month of March were fatal to Saints’ hopes of winning that fifth consecutive ring. It wasn’t a great month for your writer either with half of it spent in the Royal Liverpool hallucinating after some rather unwisely prescribed antibiotics sent my transplanted kidney into meltdown.
There was no sign of any of this ill fortune when Saints hosted Leeds Rhinos in the first home game of the year. It was a repeat of the 2022 Grand Final which Saints had won 24-12. Wellens’ side scored 24 points again, but rather awkwardly managed to concede 25.
It was the first time they had lost their home league opener since they were spanked 40-4 by Huddersfield Giants in Nathan Brown’s first game in charge in 2013. At least the Giants had the decency to go on and win the League Leaders Shield that year. This Rhinos side turned out to be as average as all of the others since their golden generation won its last title in 2017.
With that in mind I’m still not totally sure how this defeat came about. Saints had seemed in control for much of it. Leeds were helped by one of the season’s genuinely outrageously bad decisions when Chris Kendall declined to penalise Sam Walters for a shoulder to the head of Matty Lees. That error was all the more costly when Hurrell was shown a red card for a much inferior example of the genre on Richie Myler. It all lead to Blake Austin slotting the winning drop-goal. The result wasn’t exactly grand larceny but I distinctly remember leaving the stadium thinking that if Saints had been a bit more proactive and a bit less satisfied with just having possession in Leeds territory then it might have produced a different result. It would become a theme.
By the time Saints visited Leigh I was in what my dad used to call Cloud Cuckoo Land. I’d had emergency dialysis and was mostly unconscious. My family were told they weren’t sure what exactly was causing the problem at that stage and they weren’t sure I’d recover. Fortunately I knew none of this at the time and remember none of it to this day. I’m giving you this information entirely second hand from the witnesses who had not seen a life size model of Jurgen Klopp in a great big net outside the window of their hospital room.
Saints weren’t in great health either, as evidenced by a 20-12 loss to the newly promoted, newly branded Leopards. I managed to catch this on Saints TV some days later when I came back to the land of the living. It occurred to me then that the problems were largely similar to what we had seen in the loss to Leeds. Dominant in possession and territory but not that interested in scoring tries. Wellens’ side managed two through Bennison and Lomax but Leigh crossed through Joe Shorrocks on loan from Wigan and former pies Zak Hardaker and Josh Charnley. Even former Leeds man Tom Briscoe got over.
I was still a guest of the NHS by the time Hull FC came to town on St Patrick’s Day. I was all set to be able to watch this one live via the gift of Sky Go but my fellow patients had other ideas. I don’t know what was going on but some of the howls from a room across the way were like something from a Wes Craven film. As the nurses rushed to assist the more needy I was left mid treatment - not quite yet mobile enough to reach for the remote.
It felt churlish to press my call button when there was someone being brutally murdered in the next room so I sucked it up. I was just grateful that by then I was told I’d be getting moved from the high dependency ward and kicked out altogether within a few days. It didn’t quite work out like that but I was out of any significant danger.
My lack of engagement arguably helped as Saints got back on the proverbial gee-gee with a 20-12 win. Bennison scored twice proving his value whenever called on and there was a first of the season for Ben Davies who was filling in for the suspended Hurrell. Welsby crossed also while FC registered through Jake Clifford and Scott Taylor.
I should have been getting out of hospital on the day Saints travelled to Huddersfield to face the Giants. Yet there was a slight delay. Still, at least I was fit enough to operate my Sky Go this time. While the talk on the ward was of some trifling Euro qualifier in Naples I was more concerned about whether Saints could get back on track after losing two of their first four league fixtures.
Happily, they could. Hurrell was especially influential on his return to the side. He crossed for the first try before a textbook catch and pass sent Makinson over in the right hand corner. Hurrell even induced former Saint Jack Ashworth into the high shot which gave Makinson the opportunity to extend Saints’ lead to 14-6 after Ash Golding had got Ian Watson’s side back into the game. They narrowed the gap to 14-12 thanks to Innes Senior’s dubiously awarded try. It was grounded almost entirely by the winger’s wrist. Control was a very generous description of Senior’s relationship with the ball at that point. Yet it was verified by the video referee. All of which set up a frantic finale in which Saints faced a fair amount of pressure but showed great resilience to hang on.
The month ended with Saints’ first truly dominant performance of 2023. Well, it was against Wakefield. I was there to witness it too, having been released from hospital the day after the Giants win. I saw a first appearance of the season for breakout star George Delaney. I also saw two more tries for Hurrell as well as one each for Hopoate, Makinson, Percival, Lomax and Dodd. Saints’ 38-0 success was much more like the kind of performance we have come to expect against the league’s lesser lights. Trinity would end the season in last place and will spend a season in the Championship before IMG’s disregard for on-field results likely reinstates them into Super League for 2025 and beyond. This was the fourth occasion already that they had been held scoreless by an opponent. They would endure two more before season’s end. In all they scored a pitiful 303 points in their 27 regular season outings at an average of just 11.2 points per game.
And we thought our attack was shoddy.
April
Such a stroll may not be regarded as the ideal preparation for the first derby of the year. Saints entered enemy territory on Good Friday without Walmsley who had picked up a hamstring injury. Agnatius Paasi replaced him. The champions were slow out of the blocks as tries from Harry Smith and Toby King helped the home side build a 14-0 half-time lead. Saints were better after the break, getting back into it through Lomax’s try. They should have narrowed the gap further but Morgan Knowles lost possession while sliding over in the left corner after Jai Field had flapped at Dodd’s well placed lob.
We didn’t necessarily think too much of it at the time but it was crucial ground lost on the eventual League Leaders Shield and Grand Final winners. Not only that, but Knowles would pick up a five-game ban for a so-called ‘hip-drop’ which ended the season of Warriors prop Mike Cooper. The term has only seemed to enter the rugby league lexicon in 2023 but describes a tackling technique in which the tackler positions his body so that the full weight of it lands on the tackled player’s leg. Intent is pretty difficult to prove but then intent has become less relevant than duty of care in these safety conscious times.
More disappointment followed as not only suspensions but injuries started to bite for the trip to Hull KR a week later. Walmsley remained out while Percival and Sironen and missed out as well as Knowles. Former Saint Lachlan Coote was among the Rovers try scorers as Mikey Lewis scored twice to add to Jez Litten’s effort. Lussick and Lomax were the men to get over for Saints who had Lees sin-binned for a shoulder charge on Litten. Of more concern was the fact that after eight league outings Wellens’ side were the definition of average with four wins and four losses. The playoff system was always going to keep heads from dropping but this was not a side in the imperious form it had shown in recent seasons.
In a situation like that what you really need is a visit from Warrington. Except the version of Warrington which arrived on April 20 were still just about considered the form team of the competition. They had suffered their first loss of the season only a week previously, going down 13-6 to Wigan after opening the campaign with eight straight league wins. Yet that loss triggered a wretched run of form which saw the Wolves win only three of their next 12 games to finally limp into the playoffs in sixth. Coach Daryl Powell was sacked in August after his side were thrashed 42-6 by Wakefield. No, really.
On this night Saints were too strong for Wire. Ritson, Hurrell, Bennison, Hopoate and Lomax all got among the try scorers in a convincing 28-6 win. Bennison’s try was the undoubted highlight. It was one of the highlights of this or any other season for that matter as he stormed down the left flank before selling an outrageous dummy to Wire fullback Matt Dufty and cruising in. We all knew that Dufty wasn’t famed for his defensive prowess but it was still surprising and quite glorious to see him totally befuddled by the Saints man.
May
Things were never going to be so straightforward when the red vee visited Perpignan to face Catalans Dragons in early May. The French outfit had won six of their first seven in the league but displayed their vulnerability in losing three in a row before Saints arrived. Walmsley opened the scoring on his return to action and for a while it looked like Saints might bludgeon Steve McNamara’s side down the middle of their defence. Hurrell created a try for Welsby in a similarly central channel to that which had been exploited by Walmsley. Yet Hurrell’s disciplinary issues and those of the team resurfaced as he was yellow carded for dissent.
That contributed to the Dragons managing to claw their way back into the game, going in level at 12-12 at the break thanks to Arthur Mourgue channelling his inner Robbie Paul circa Wembley 1996 and Matt Ikuvalu going over in the space temporarily vacated by Hurrell. Ikuvalu was later sin-binned himself for a high shot on Welsby but that didn’t stop the Dragons edging away in the second half with two Tom Davies tries to which Saints couldn’t find an answer.
In featuring in that defeat Roby had equalled Coslett’s appearance record. It was an altogether more positive experience when he moved into sole possession of the mark at home to Salford Red Devils a week later. The Channel 4 cameras were on hand to see Saints celebrate the occasion with a 26-12 win. They had to come from 12-0 down after Brodie Croft and Ryan Brierley crossed for the visitors. Bell and Sironen got Saints back into it before Lomax nudged his side ahead by capitalising on a wild pass by Rhys Williams to Joe Burgess on the Salford line. Hopoate’s silky pass put Makinson over in the right hand corner and the win was capped when Batchelor was sent through by Lomax.
Saints had a winning record again, but six wins and five losses from 11 outings was definitely one to file under unconvincing. On top of which they lost Lees for three game after he was found guilty of a striking Shane Wright with a forearm in an incident which saw the Salford man suffer a suspected broken ankle.
Still, the day belonged to the skipper who had etched himself indelibly into the record books with appearance number 532.
League matters could be placed on the back-burner for a while as Saints visited Championship Halifax in the sixth round of the Challenge Cup. The fixture evoked memories of the 1987 final when the West Yorkshire side edged Saints 19-18 in one of the few games I can think of in which I regret that the concept of the video referee had not yet emerged.
With the teams now in different divisions and the gap between the full time top tier and the lower leagues having grown into a chasm since then expectations for this one were somewhat different. Wellens was taking nothing for granted and opted to select a strong team. Roby was rested but 12 of the side which had claimed the world crown at the start of the year were on duty. Lussick crossed twice in relief of Roby while Makinson, Welsby and Jake Wingfield also registered four pointers. Jacob Fairbank made sure that the Championship side were not shut out but Saints ran out 26-6 winners to ease through to the quarter-finals.
Yet the abiding memory for some will be Knowles’ brainless high tackle on Tom Inman in the final seconds of the match. He had only just returned from the five-game ban he picked up for that hip drop on Mike Cooper at Wigan. He would now sit out two more games after being red carded by referee Aaron Moore. Discipline was becoming a big problem for Saints and Knowles had shot to the top of the list of those who urgently needed to rein it in.
The month ended with a trip to Headingley to face Leeds on the occasion of Makinson’s 300th appearance for the club. Like the first meeting of the season there was only one point between the sides but this time it was Saints who claimed the win. You couldn’t really compare the level of opposition but there were echoes of the win over Penrith in the 13-12 scoreline and in Dodd’s extra time one-pointer.
That came after Makinson marked his milestone appearance with a try to cancel out Ash Handley’s opener for the Rhinos. Yet the Saints winger would later collide disastrously with Welsby as the fullback tried to deal with a high ball. The mix-up presented Cameron Smith with an easy score but Sironen’s try and a Makinson penalty evened things up. There was controversy when James McDonnell was sent off for a punch on Lomax which nobody - not even the touch judge who reported it - could see on the footage following the game. The teams would meet for a third time in the regular season which - perhaps for all the wrong reasons - looked like the only decent argument for loop fixtures. These clashes were not dull.
June
Alas the same could not be said of Huddersfield who were Saints’ opponents when the Magic Weekend greeted the arrival of June. Ian Watson’s side had finished third in 2022 and had been fancied by many to challenge at the top of the table in 2023. But they arrived in Newcastle having won only five of their opening 12 fixtures.
For the occasion Saints were donning their heritage shirt of brown and sky hoops. Lees returned from his suspension while Percival was available again after a hamstring problem. Saints had not been dazzling in the first few months of the season but chose this weekend to put on a show. It was arguably an attacking performance unmatched by Wellens’ side throughout 2023 as they racked up 48 points with only six in reply from the Giants.
Makinson made most of the headlines with four tries while there were two for Hurrell and one each for Percival, Lussick and Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook. And all that after former Saint Kevin Naiqama had opened the scoring for the Giants. Saints cut Huddersfield apart time and time again on the edge occupied by Hurrell and Makinson but saved their best for last with the Lussick try. Welsby collected Tui Lolohea’s low kick inside his own 10 metre line and set off 50 yards downfield and into Giants territory before finding Makinson in support. He toyed with the chasing defenders a little before delivering a little flicked offload out of the back of his hand to the backup hooker who did the rest. A genuine champagne moment that made you believe that the attack could be something more than just a relentless slog to ‘build pressure’. It was seldom - if ever - repeated.
The feel good factor created by the Magic performance carried over to the following week’s visit of Wigan. There was already a score to settle after the Good Friday defeat to Matty Peet’s men and though there wasn’t quite the swagger seen at Newcastle it was nevertheless a dominant second half performance from Saints. Having been pegged back to 12–12 when Bevan French’s kick took a kind bounce back towards him and away from Welsby Saints went into the break ahead thanks to the fullback’s impudent dribble and regather close to the visitors’ line.
Makinson also crossed twice in the win after Batchelor had started the fun. There was also Paasi’s only try of the season to enjoy. Unbeaten in five in all competitions, it looked like Saints were finally hitting top gear after their early season inconsistency.
Next was a chance to win through to the last four of the Challenge Cup. They visited a Hull FC side which was still playing it’s traditional role of disappointing under achiever despite the appointment of serial winner Tony Smith as head coach. A free to air audience on BBC got to see another impressive showing from the champs, particularly after half-time again. Though it’s fair to say that they received a little assistance in that from Josh Griffin.
Batchelor scored for the second game running to put Saints in front but they fell behind when Griffin and ex-Saint Andre Savelio crossed for FC. Hurrell ensured that the teams would go in level at the break but it was after the hooter that events took a decisive turn in Saints favour. Contesting a nothing of a decision with no time remaining earned Griffin a yellow card from Chris Kendall but when the Hull back rower went back to the official to continue the debate his yellow card became a red.
Forced to play the entire second half with 12 men against a team in form Hull were overwhelmed as Sironen and then Dodd went over. Jake Trueman’s try briefly had Hull hopes flickering but Welsby and Bell rounded off a comfortable win.
Alas it was a different story when Saints returned to the KCom for a league meeting just five days later. Wellens experimented with Knowles at hooker and was without the increasingly influential Makinson. The result was a lacklustre effort in which Bell scored Saints’ only try while Clifford, Carlos Tuimavave, Trueman, Chris Satae, Cameron Scott and Darnell McIntosh all registered for the black and whites. It was a sixth league defeat of the season for Saints, as many as they had suffered in the whole of the 2022 regular season. And we were only in June.
The month ended with a home meeting with Castleford Tigers. Andy Last had taken over the coaching responsibilities from Lee Radford early in the campaign but 2023 was proving to be a bit of a slog for the Tigers. They were no match for Saints on a filthy, wet night. Last’s men were nilled for a third time in the league while Saints ran in tries through Sione Mata’utia, Welsby, Bennison and Percival.
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