This off season lark is proving to be a long, drawn out affair, isn’t it? It’s 79 days since Sam Tomkins put us out of our misery broke our hearts with that late try which took Catalans Dragons to Old Trafford where they would let the side down by losing to Wigan. I don’t know about you but nothing good has happened in my personal life since. There are another 54 days before the competitive action starts again for Saints with the visit of pointless Super League placeholder London Broncos on February 16. That seems a long way off, so let’s fill some of the void with a look back to happier times.
Saints began the 2001 season looking for a third consecutive Super League Grand Final win. The first came in 1999 under the stewardship of former Wigan great Ellery Hanley while in 2000 Tim Jonkers’ try put the lid on a 29-16 victory over the Warriors after Ian Millward had taken over from Hanley early in the campaign.
The first year of the new millennium was the last at Saints for popular prop forward Apollo Perelini after a six-year spell which had brought the Samoan three Super League titles and two Challenge Cup winners medals. His compatriot Fereti Tuilagi had only been with the club for two years but was a Grand Final winner in each after arriving from Halifax. Both were leaving to take up opportunities in rugby union. Perelini joined Sale while winger cum second rower Tuilagi switched to Leicester Tigers. Another wide man Chris Smith also departed after a three-year stay which brought 79 appearances and a part in that 1999 success.
Filling the holes in the pack were Australian pair David Fairleigh and Peter Shiels. Fairleigh was 30 when he arrived for his one and only season in the red vee but would leave a lasting impression. He had already been an Australian international and State Of Origin representative during his time with North Sydney Bears and Newcastle Knights. Shiels had been a veteran of over 100 appearances in the Australian competition having spells at Penrith, Western Suburbs and Western Reds in Perth before teaming up with Fairleigh at the Knights.
Both had debuted as Saints added the world crown to their back-to-back domestic titles with a 20-18 World Club Challenge win over Brisbane Broncos in Bolton in January. Barely a fortnight later they faced their first derby as Saints made progress in the Challenge Cup with a 22-8 win over Wigan. They sat out the 34-22 win at Whitehaven in the following round before making their Super League debuts in a 31-24 defeat at Bradford in early March.
The Challenge Cup has been a fairly movable feast during the summer era. In 2001 Saints only had that league visit to the Bulls and victories at home to Huddersfield and London before the semi-final against Leeds Rhinos on March 31. The Headingley side were beaten finalists at Murrayfield in 2000, losing to Bradford when Bullmania was at its loudest. Undeterred, the Rhinos reached the 2001 semi-final with wins over Swinton - scoring 106 points in the process - as well as Castleford Tigers and Hull FC.
Like Saints they had begun the Super League campaign with two wins and a defeat. The Broncos were dismissed 50-18 at The Valley while Wakefield Trinity went down 42-14 at Headingley. Yet entering the huge last four clash Dean Lance’s side had been smashed 42-6 by Wigan at the JJB Stadium. It just so happened that they would return there eight days later to face Saints for a place in the Twickenham final. These were the days when Wembley was being rebuilt and the Challenge Cup final moved around the UK’s rugby union stadia.
Then - as now - the BBC had the major Challenge Cup rights and the match was broadcast live during an edition of the corporation’s former Saturday afternoon flagship Grandstand. St Helens born schoolteacher and dual code international rugby star Ray French was still regarded as the voice of rugby league on TV at that time. He was the main caller with summary from another former star of both codes in Jonathan Davies.
French retired in 2019 but Davies remarkably continues to be entrusted by the BBC for rugby league analysis to this day. This despite so often outing himself for what he is - a union man who had extremely transferable skills as a player but who nevertheless gives off the vibe of someone who doesn’t watch a single rugby league game in between TV assignments. Quite how he endures 23 years on from this one would be bewildering if we didn’t all know that it’s the product of the sports media’s general apathy towards RL. Leave him there and nobody important will notice, seems to be the philosophy.
French’s introduction of the teams was an eye opener too. In running through the Saints line-up he reported that Millward had waited until viewing the conditions at Wigan before deciding whether to select Anthony Sullivan or Steve Hall on the left wing. Really? Was that really a selection debate in the foreign land of 22 years ago? Sullivan may have been 32 at the time of this clash, and about to start the last of his 10 years at the club, but he was still one of the premier wingers in the game. He remains among the best that I have seen trotting down the left wing for Saints in close to 40 years of fandom. Perhaps only Darren Albert betters the Welshman in that regard during my time, and he only spent four seasons with the club.
Sullivan scored 213 tries in 305 appearances for Saints after joining from Hull KR in 1991. He won three Super League titles, three Challenge Cups and that World Club Challenge just a few weeks prior to this clash. Contrast that with Hall, whose 21 tries in 64 games is respectable but who never really convinced before following Sullivan out of the exit at the end of 2001.
The rest of Saints’ line-up is a familiar who’s who of rugby league. Present head coach Paul Wellens was a 21 year-old fullback on the road to greatness, while Sullivan’s opposite winger was the experienced Kiwi international Sean Hoppe. Former Leeds and Wigan centre Kevin Iro was joined by Paul Newlove in one of the more devastating centre partnerships in Saints history. In the halves Tommy Martyn was one of the last great mavericks at stand-off before set completion and going through the processes forced his kind into extinction. He played alongside arguably the greatest halfback of the Super League era in Sean Long. The two of them were pure excitement.
Fairleigh and Shiels took their places in the pack. The former partnered Sonny Nickle at prop while skipper Chris Joynt had been passed fit to feature alongside Shiels in the second row. Nickle was in his second spell at Saints after having previously been sacrificed in the deal which brought Newlove from Bradford. Alongside Newlove Keiron Cunningham was one of the catalysts for transforming a perennial bridesmaid into the dominant force of the early years of the Super League era. He was immovable at hooker while another all-time great locked the scrum in the shape of Paul Sculthorpe.
On the bench Vila Mata’utia returned after a characteristic suspension (what is it with those Mata’utias?) and was joined by Jonkers, John Stankevitch and utility back Anthony Stewart.
We were told that Lance had taken a massive gamble in deploying Karl Pratt at halfback. The truth is that any half hoping to mix it with the Long of 2001 was rolling the dice a little. Pratt wore number two on his back and was nominally a winger in the early part of a career which would sadly be cut short by a shoulder injury when he was just 25. He was in because Ryan Sheridan was out injured, while the Rhinos were also missing the imposing presence of Keith Senior at centre.
Iestyn Harris was the Rhinos’ star playmaker and he partnered Pratt with Australian speedster Brett Mullins at fullback. Kiwi centre Tonie Carroll played opposite youngster Chev Walker with teenager Mark Calderwood and Francis Cummins on the wings.
The pack was led by current Sky Sports summariser Barrie McDermott but his broadcasting colleague Jamie Jones-Buchanan missed out through injury. Darren Fleary was the other starting prop with Matt Diskin at hooker. Anthony Farrell and Andy Hay formed the second row while at loose forward a 20 year-old Kevin Sinfield got the nod from Lance ahead of former Aussie Test star Bradley Clyde. The Canberra legend had to wait his turn on the bench alongside Marcus St.Hilaire, Jason Netherton and Jamie Mathiou.
Now here’s one for everyone who tells you that things were so much better in days gone by, especially on the subject of attendances at big games. Underwhelming crowds are not a new thing it seems. The stadium then known as the JJB in Wigan holds just over 25,000 people, yet there were only just over 16,400 on hand for what turned out to be a bona fide classic. It seems there have always been those who would choose to stay indoors and watch on TV rather than make the effort and fork out for games that aren’t a given when the fixture list is announced at the start of the season. No doubt had Twitter (X, whatever) been around there would have been numerous threads lamenting how ‘terrible’ it all looked on TV.
It wouldn’t take long for the BBC to show us how little they were worried about how it looked in any case. Just two minutes in Leeds earned a penalty under the Saints posts when Joynt was caught lying in the ruck by referee Russell Smith. Harris opted for what looked a routine two points to open the scoring, only to dreadfully screw his shot wide in the manner of Diana Ross at an opening ceremony. As Harris lined up his attempt Auntie Beeb decided to embellish their coverage of one of RL’s biggest games with flashing graphics displaying that afternoon’s football scores. They continued to do this at regular intervals throughout the action regardless of what was happening on the field. So, Leeds fans rueing an embarrassing miss from Harris could at least console themselves with the knowledge that Shaun Goater had scored for Manchester City against Aston Villa.
Harris might reflect that he wishes he’d been playing under today’s rules which would have taken the option of a shot at goal away and spared his blushes. Joynt’s infringement would only result in a set restart nowadays. The sort of offence that players train for at the behest of the marginal gains merchants pulling the strings. I’m not among those who consider this A Good Thing but I take on board completely the argument that there are now fewer and fewer sides who would go for goal after only two minutes even if the chance were to present itself. The analytics - as they say in the NFL - probably suggest you should push for the try.
It took Saints six minutes to get into Rhino territory and they didn’t stay long. Two legends combined to rustle up a total porridge as Cunningham’s drop-off pass to Sculthorpe was put down by the loose forward. A Cunningham drop-off going wrong is something which could be mined for ironic comedy value well into next week but there is a story to tell. Suffice it to say that the great man didn’t always play in a fashion which was the antithesis to his coaching philosophy. Even if this column regularly tells you that he was faultless.
Keen to forget that embarrassment Sculthorpe made amends and then some just seconds later. McDermott’s playing style is still characterised by stupid violence and a relentless but admirable desire to keep the ball alive. We would see the former soon enough but first the latter. He would now no doubt pillory his attempted offload on halfway which scarcely threatened to find an amber and blue shirt and was instead plucked out of the air by Sculthorpe. The ex-Warrington man snaffled it in space and rumbled 50 metres all the way to the line to post the afternoon’s first points. With nobody in the vicinity Sculthorpe was able to touch down close to the sticks to give Long the simple task of tacking on two more for a 6-0 lead.
Saints could have added to their advantage had Joynt not spilled Martyn’s pass under pressure from Calderwood. Instead - and barely a minute later - it was the Leeds man celebrating. Walker - decked out in skull cap - looked like prime Steve Renouf as he broke the line and galloped down the Leeds left. His pass to Cummins was a little too early but Cummins was able to keep the movement going to Mullins who in turn found Calderwood supporting down the middle of the field. Even Harris couldn’t miss this conversion and the scores were level at 6-6. If this were one of my weekly review pieces of the action I might point out Hoppe’s missed tackle on Walker which got Saints in trouble. But it’s not so I won’t.
Now we have touched slightly on how differently the game is refereed in 2023. The next couple of incidents highlight that loudly and clearly. First Martyn was late joining a tackle on Hay and resorted to desperate measures, sliding in knees first. A penalty was deemed sufficient which seems an unlikely outcome in 2023. Yet if that raises eyebrows among modern rugby league viewers it has nothing on what McDermott got away with a few minutes later.
The Leeds prop had possession wrestled from him one on one by Shiels. As the pair hit the ground McDermott’s frustration got the better of him as he aimed a swinging right into the face of the Saints man. It was intentional, direct contact to the head and would result in a straight red card today. Even those who preach about the game going soft and who campaign for the return of The Biff would shy away from defending it. Shiels was helped off the field with blood pouring from what appeared to be an eye socket. He would not return, though it took far longer to rule him out than it would have done in these days of HIAs. Referee Smith gave only a penalty following which Kevin Iro was held up on the line by a combination of Walker, Cummins and Sinfield.
Iro was playing the last of his three seasons at Saints after joining from Auckland. Prior to that he had played for Leeds in the years immediately prior to the creation of Super League. Yet it is his time at Wigan which brought him to the attention of English rugby league fans and which always made it a little surreal for me to watch him in the red vee. Iro was one of Saints’ chief destroyers in the infamous 27-0 hammering by Wigan in the 1989 Challenge Cup final at Wembley, scoring two tries. I’m not sure I ever quite forgave him.
His inability to touch down only delayed the inevitable. In the next set Mata’utia attracted two defenders to him before finding an offload to Joynt. He moved it on to Martyn who put Long over on the left before Carroll could make the tackle. It was sent up for review by Smith but replays showed that the Saints half had grounded the ball comfortably. He couldn’t find the conversion from the touchline but Saints had nudged in front 10-6.
Mata’utia may have been instrumental in creating Long’s try but the ex-Doncaster man was soon showing the other, rather darker side of his game. Six minutes from the break he was involved in a quite needless altercation with Fleary which resulted in both men being sent to the sin bin for 10 minutes. Mata’utia was only just back from a six-week suspension. Most of the punches thrown missed their targets but it was petulant from the pair. Like McDermott before him Mata’utia had lost his composure having lost possession and responded in a way that was all too predictable throughout his career.
Ever the pioneers of broadcasting the BBC then treated us to some special comments from the injured Sheridan prior to half time. Though it offers zero insight this is something which Sky Sports swear by these days. The only difference is that they now tend to interview assistant coaches rather than absent players. That is a career transition that Sheridan has since made so it was nice for him to get some practice in a couple of decades early.
Not so nice for him was the fact that Saints still had time to extend their lead before the first half came to an end. They looked to have blown their last chance when an Iro offload went into touch. However, Smith spotted that the ball had been touched by Walker before it went over the sideline giving the champions one more opportunity.
They were further helped by a penalty for interference close to the line. From there Long dabbed a precise low kick into the in-goal where Martyn appeared to win the race to touch down. That he was able to do so owed much to the fact that Pratt had got a touch to the ball on its way through which slowed it down and prevented it from going dead. The incident was reviewed to make sure that Martyn was onside and that he had grounded cleanly. Both questions were answered in the affirmative. Long’s conversion was a formality and suddenly Saints were turning around with a 10-point lead at 16-6.
Leeds needed a response coming out for the second half and it came swiftly. Just one minute had elapsed following the break when Pratt had a more positive influence on proceedings. Walker wreaked more havoc out wide which allowed the makeshift half to take the pass from dummy half and dive over. Smith spotted that the ball had squirmed loose at some point and so again handed the decision on to the video referee. The evidence demonstrated that the ball had only escaped Pratt’s grasp after he had applied enough downward pressure to score. That cut the Saints lead to six at 16-10. It should have been reduced to four but Harris was guilty of another glaring miss from the conversion.
The Welsh international was having a day to forget with the boot. His next effort was too long for his chasers, prompting Davies to lament the fact that Harris was the only kicking option for the Rhinos. That seems an incredible observation to make about a team which also featured Sinfield. He would go on to be one of the great playmakers of the Super League era but this was apparently before his time. Either that or Davies was displaying that he knew as much about rugby league then as he does now.
It got worse for Harris when he kicked out on the full shortly after. That put Leeds under pressure defending their own line. That pressure told when Mathiou was pinged for interfering with Fairleigh’s attempts to play the ball. Long was not as forgiving as Harris had been, stretching Saints’ lead to eight points at 18-10. There was just over half an hour between Saints and a first Challenge Cup final appearance since their 1997 victory over Bradford Bulls.
Yet the Rhinos were not about to go away. Whether or not Sinfield was capable of contributing with the boot he found another way. With his side camped on the Saints line he dummied to Clyde before darting through a huge gap in the defensive line left by a confused Martyn and Mata’utia. It was Sinfield’s 16th try in 58 appearances for Leeds to that point. Fourteen years on he would sign off from the Headingley club after 521 appearances during which he crossed for 86 tries. He also slotted over 1792 goals for a total of 3967 points. Nobody has scored more points for Leeds and nobody has amassed more in the 27-year history of Super League.
Harris might reflect now that he wishes he had passed the opportunity on to Sinfield to land a couple more goals. For now he found his range with this conversion of the Sinfield try leaving the tie on the proverbial knife edge at 18-16. Those missed goals from were threatening to loom large despite the fact that more than 25 minutes remained.
It was another Harris error which swung the game back in Saints’ favour. This time he was rather more unfortunate, playing the ball from an offside position after a Sculthorpe offload had touched a Leeds hand. Millward’s side built another attack from there, culminating in Newlove diving in at the left hand corner from Joynt’s pass. He was close to the touchline and the touch in-goal line but his effort was rarified after another review. Long was unsuccessful with a difficult conversion from the left sideline but a six-point lead at 22-16 still felt significant.
Not so fast. The lead lasted only three minutes as the game entered its final quarter and traveled headlong into epic status. Mullins was next to write a plot twist, Again Pratt was involved. His grubber was superbly weighted for the former Canberra man to touch down just ahead of a despairing Long. The extras were unmissable and we were all tied up again at 22-22.
In a game such as this normal convention goes out of the nearest window. There was an element of shit or bustery about Lance’s decision to throw Carroll back into the action with a little over 10 minutes left. The Kiwi centre had left the field in the first half after feeling his hamstring. Forever with their fingers on the pulse the commentary team and sideline reporters had previously assured us that he would not return. Lance clearly felt that the time had come to gamble.
Martyn was also one with a penchant for risk. His next punt was literally that - perhaps in the American football sense - as rather than clear his lines on the last and hope to push Leeds back he instead aimed for the sideline. His outlandish 40-20 was a moment of inspiration of the kind only the special players can conjure up at this point in a tied game of such high stakes and intensity.
He would soil his own homework moments later, taking Sculthorpe’s pass and looking for all the world like the scorer of a potentially decisive try. Yet the stand-off’s reaction had a slight air of resignation and guilt about it. The standard Martyn response to scoring a try of that magnitude would have been rather more expressive, and very probably involve some interactive ’bantz’ with opposition fans. The all-seeing eye of the technology shed light on Martyn’s bashfulness, proving that the ball had somehow prised itself away from the crook of his arm as he added the diving, final flourish. The scores remained level.
Before the next moment of drama we were dutifully informed that Cunningham had been named man of the match. While this was far from his best performance in a Saints shirt there was often an air of inevitability about another individual gong for the hooker. Like James Roby after him, Cunningham rarely fell below an eight out of 10 in terms of performance. He was consistency personified with the added propensity to tear an opposition to shreds should the mood take him. For the period during which a Sky Sports sponsor offered up wristwatches as prizes for the man of the match one of the most commonly uttered phrases on TV was Cunningham saying ‘thanks to Tissot for the watch’.
He may not have been Saints’ top performer in this one but Martyn was far from done with his quest to make a defining contribution. As Saints pressed again the Irish international swung a left boot from the shadows of the Leeds posts to drop Saints into a one-point lead with only five minutes left. Cunningham - who else? - had provided the pass from dummy half after Fleary’s interference on Stankevitch had given the champions the field position.
This being Saints - and in particular Saints under Millward - it always seemed a big ask to expect them to shut up shop at that juncture and see out the one-point win. What you might not expect is for the error which gave Leeds another chance to come from present day Head Coach and 2001 world class fullback Wellens. It hadn’t been that long since Millward had converted him from a halfback probably lacking the pace to convince at the top level into one of the league’s best fullbacks. The position suited Wellens because of his other worldly ability to know exactly where he needed to be well before anyone else on the field had figured it out. Yet even legends make mistakes, illustrated when he coughed up a short kick-off and allowed Clyde to seize possession.
The Rhinos mounted another raid towards the Saints line. Yet if Harris was having a bad time with his kicking it was his passing which let him down when a place in the final was on the line. The ex-Warrington man turned down the opportunity to answer Martyn’s drop-goal with one of his own and chose instead to go try hunting.
Now, do you remember that Tomkins try I mentioned at the top? The one which denied Saints a tilt at a fifth successive title two months ago? The way he feinted to land the one-pointer before gliding through the defence for the try which took Catalans to Old Trafford? Well…this was nothing like that. Searching for the pass which would have seen him end a fraught 80 minutes a hero, Harris instead found the grateful arms of Sculthorpe.
Were he inclined towards blowing his own trumpet the Saints man could have made his case to pip Cunningham for the man of the match award. He was among the top tacklers, had already scored one opportunist try, and had now picked off his former Wire colleague’s pass to all but preserve the win. And yet Sculthorpe - who like Cunningham is one of several Saints in this side to be able to lay realistic claim to a place in the pantheon of club legends - had one more stroke to add to his masterpiece.
It owed much to Martyn’s insistence on playing what was in front of him without worrying about trivialities like how long remained, what the score was and how high the stakes were. The stand-off kept the ball alive to Jonkers who in turn shifted it to Long. Scanning to his right Long found Sculthorpe in a ludicrous amount of space, the Rhinos defenders having cracked like Laurent Fignon in 89. Long couldn’t find the extra two but there was nobody inside the JJB or watching at home of a red vee persuasion who cared.
The Bulls again provided the opposition in the final, as they had for Saints’ two previous cup wins in 96 and 97. It was the 100th Challenge Cup final, won 13-6 thanks to tries from Martyn and Cunningham and another one-pointer from the former. Long secured the Lance Todd Trophy as man of the match for the first time. He would have three in his pocket by the time he moved on to Hull FC in 2009.
A third consecutive Super League crown proved elusive. Saints saw off the Rhinos 38-30 in the opening round of the playoffs before going into Hull and snatching a 24-20 win over FC. That set up an eliminator with Wigan but Saints were thrashed 44-10 on a forgettable return to the scene of the cup semi-final triumph. Without Long, Newlove, Sullivan and Nickle an injury ravaged Saints were blown away. Sky Sports front man Brian Carney scored a try double as did Leigh Leopards coach Adrian Lam. Yet the Warriors couldn’t capture the silverware, hilariously thrashed 37-6 at Old Trafford by a Bulls side putting their Challenge Cup final defeat behind them.
The Super League trophy was only on loan in West Yorkshire, Saints wresting it back from the Bulls the following season thanks to Long’s late drop-goal and Joynt’s voluntary tackle that wasn’t. Which is another story…
Saints: Wellens, Hoppe, Iro, Newlove, Sullivan, Martyn, Long, Fairleigh, Cunningham, Nickle, Joynt, Shiels, Sculthorpe. Interchanges: Mata’utia, Jonkers, Stankevitch, Stewart
Leeds Rhinos: Mullins, Calderwood, Carroll, Walker, Cummins, Harris, Pratt, Fleary, Diskin, McDermott, Farrell, Hay, Sinfield. Interchanges: St Hilaire, Netherton, Clyde, Mathiou