Wigan Warriors 16 Saints 12 - Review

Though pride was restored from a much improved performance Saints nevertheless went down to a third straight Super League defeat, losing 16-12 at Wigan on Friday night (July 12).

It’s a loss which ultimately sees Paul Wellens’ side slump from second in the table at the start of the weekend to fourth by the end of it. Wins for Warrington over Leeds and Hull KR in their derby with Hull FC have sent Saints down a slippery slope. Had Salford won at Catalans Dragons on Saturday (July 13) then Saints would have fallen as low as fifth. Which is alright for the Rhinos of this world but would set some serious alarm bells off among the Saints fan base. 

Meanwhile Wigan opened up a four-point lead at the top over nearest challengers Warrington and Hull KR. Matty Peet’s side now have a six-point advantage over Saints which will be stretched further should they win their game in hand against Leigh Leopards. It’s not looking like a League Leaders Shield sort of year for the red vee. Yet as we all know, the current system cares little for that and consequently neither do many fans. Let us not abandon all hope yet.

Following last week’s abject, blush-worthy 8-6 home defeat to Castleford Tigers Wellens made two changes to his 17. It would probably have been many more had he been able to call on the services of the nine or 10 players forced to sit this one out through injury. Tommy Makinson, Konrad Hurrell, Alex Walmsley, Sione Mata’utia, Joe Batchelor, Matt Whitley, Morgan Knowles and Jake Wingfield were among those still unavailable.

Given that we knew about all those well ahead of time the most notable change was the omission of Lewis Dodd. The halfback is on his way to South Sydney Rabbitohs for 2025 and beyond yet is apparently not good enough to get into a malfunctioning, uninspiring Saints side right now. Many fans have pointed the finger at him for the team’s recent displays, particularly the Tigers debacle. They have drawn the easy to reach conclusion that with bigger fish to fry from next year Dodd has already checked out. 

Wellens was at pains before the game and after to point out that the decision to leave Dodd out had nothing to do with his decision to move on. Instead he explained that there are just one or two things he needs to improve on. Actually, Wellens probably said ‘fix up’ in the universally agreed Coachspeak in which he is now fluent. He added that if Dodd were to make these improvements then there is a road back into the team for him before he takes flight. 

Which is all well and good but if Dodd was left out on the basis of what he needs to improve on then there are about a dozen others who featured in the Castleford loss who are in the same rickety old boat. As it was the only other man involved in that game who didn’t make this one was Moses Mbye who was unavailable in any case due to a one-match suspension. 

The omission of Dodd was an easy way to send a message to the fans and players that those not performing will be replaced. But since there were so many in that category it feels rather like Dodd has been scapegoated. Yes his kicking game has lacked variety and he has not looked all that keen to take on the line since his achilles injury but how much of that is also as a result of coaching? Wellens isn’t known for his expansive, devil-may-care tactical approach. Let the shackles off Dodd and you might yet see the best of him before he becomes a bunny.

The decision to leave him out offered an opportunity to youngster Harry Robertson. At just 18 years of age he made his first team debut at fullback with Jack Welsby moving to stand-off and Jonny Lomax to halfback. 

The addition of Robertson to the mix turned out to be a real positive and offers much to look forward to for the fans. Potentially as exciting as when Welsby himself came through to make his debut in 2018. No pressure, Harry. He brushed off a couple of early errors to turn in a very exciting performance. He played with confidence, skill and speed and looks a real find. Yet as much as his introduction helped it could just as easily have been Lomax and not Dodd watching from the stands in order to accommodate the teenager.

The second change saw the highly welcome return of Daryl Clark at hooker. Having missed the visit of his former club his inclusion here was especially important in the absence of Mbye. Jake Burns was named on the bench as another option at 9 but along with Sam Royle was an unused sub. More on which later. Agnatius Paasi earned a first start since April of last year - also against Wigan - although this time at loose forward as James Bell switched to the second row.

Now before we all start feeling too sorry for ourselves about our absentee list let’s take a look at our opposition. Wigan fans were queuing up on social media before kick-off to argue that their injury list was as bad if not worse than that of Saints. Jai Field, Kruise Leeming, Brad O’Neill, Mike Cooper and Willie Isa had already been ruled out previously when the news broke that Bevan French wouldn’t be involved either. 

The reigning Steve Prescott Man Of Steel has a hamstring injury which could rule him out for several weeks. It meant that Wigan were without their fastest attacking threats with Field - indisputably the fastest mullet in northern hemisphere rugby league - also missing. Twenty year-old Zach Eckersley stepped into Field’s fullback role while French’s place alongside Harry Smith in the halves went to an even younger starlet in 18 year-old Jack Farrimond. 

Oddly, Peet named ex-Saints mercenary Luke Thompson at hooker which seemed fitting considering what that man will do for money. Peet then ruined the joke by revealing in his pre-game interview that Thompson probably wouldn’t be at dummy half in attack and that Liam Farrell and Farrimond would share that responsibility. The selection of Thompson at nine was more about where he would defend. 

The game may have been lacking some star names but it didn’t need long to reach its first talking point. Less than one minute in Matty Lees went in to tackle Kaide Ellis, hitting him in the head with a shoulder as the Wigan man was losing height as he was brought to ground. That proved enough mitigation for video referee Ben Thaler to rule out advising on field official Liam Moore to produce a red card but Lees still saw yellow. 

At this point in our journey there is no point in screaming ‘that’s never a yellow’ at your telly or writing it in capital letters on Twitter. It just is according to the rules. It’s the way the game is officiated now under the cloud of possible legal action from former players who have suffered brain injuries from what they believe was a lack of protection from the game’s authorities. 

You can disagree with the rule, but that is the rule. The problem is it isn’t always applied consistently as we will see later. Perhaps the fact that Lees has not been handed any further punishment by the Match Review Panel (MRP) will help to dampen any lingering outrage. 

Now we know that for all their attacking shortcomings this year Saints are an outstanding defensive team whoever is in the 17. It shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise to us then when Lees’ 10 minutes in exile passed without the concession of any points on the scoreboard. In fact it was Saints who went in front as Robertson showed us a first glimpse of his qualities.

Clark gave Saints the much needed zip from dummy half that the hooker-less Wigan outfit was missing and he pressed home this advantage as the first half reached its midway point. He fed Curtis Sironen who was able to free his arms and offload to Robertson on his left shoulder. He showed great pace and poise to draw the last defender before releasing Welsby with a clear run to the line. 

Welsby crossed for his 12th try of this Super League season. That tally leaves him fifth in the scorers list currently headed by Warriors winger  and only remaining speed merchant Liam Marshall. Mark Percival is Super League’s leading points scorer in 2024 and helped himself to the easy extra two on offer to put Saints 6-0 up.

A period of settled consolidation of that score was perhaps what was needed but - and not for the only time on the night - Saints allowed Wigan back into it almost immediately. Just three minutes after Welsby’s effort Eckersley broke out of a Lomax tackle on Wigan’s left edge and found Jake Wardle on his inside. His task was as simple as Welsby’s had been in running unopposed to the line. Smith made no mistake with the conversion and we were all locked up again at 6-6.

Allowing quick responses to their scores was only one costly, arguably game defining mistake which Saints repeated on the night. We had a foreshadowing of perhaps the game’s pivotal moment just after Wardle’s try when Saints winger Tee Ritson gifted possession to the home side just 25 metres out. Not from poor handling or an incorrect play-the-ball but by running into a posse of Wigan defenders and being dragged into touch before he could get to the ground to accept the tackle. 

Nothing came of that possession as Farrell was eventually caught on the last of the ensuing set. But Saints had received their warning. 

There was no warning or a anything like it for penny-pinching NRL flop Thompson when his lazy grab caught Clark high soon after. Perhaps the prop (or is it hooker?) saw a loose fiver floating around above the Saints man’s head and his reaction was just instinctive. Granted there was not a lot of force in it but it was careless and direct contact with the head. You don’t like it I know but it’s a yellow card now. We can’t pick and choose when we want to protect players. 

I’m not one to blame or criticise referees but one has to wonder whether Moore was the best choice given his background and his prior allegiance. I’m happy to believe he doesn’t consider those prior allegiances at the expense of his career. Lord knows Thompson doesn’t give two proverbials about his prior allegiances. But if you take the very simple step of appointing someone who doesn’t hail from one of these two towns then you cut off the innuendos at source. Doesn’t the RFL have enough faith in any of it’s other Super League referees to handle this fixture? Bloody Chris Kendall must be stewing.

As the first period came to a close Wigan had the last possession. Smith tried a long range drop goal but it barely left the ground. So the sides went in to the break level at 6-6. Which for most Saints fans was an unexpected success given the number of injuries and the nature of the defeat by Castleford seven days before. Nobody had given Saints a chance, but they were still hanging in there.

Having got away with it in the first half Thompson reprised his high contact on Clark with another pop, this time at Lomax. It was similarly lacking in force and went similarly unpunished save for the award of a penalty. I guess you could say that’s consistency. Either that or Moore didn’t want to deal with the baggage that would have come from sitting Thompson down. I was half expecting Peet - annoyingly beloved by everyone and with a reputation to uphold - to substitute his man out of some irresistible corinthian spirit which clearly pulses through his Godly veins. Alas he did not.

Twelve minutes into the second half Saints surprised themselves and everybody watching them inside the stadium and at home by taking the lead. Having been involved in the Welsby try Sironen was poking his hooter in again. This time he took a Lomax pass a few metres out and headed for the line. He was held up by the Wigan defence but managed to offload the ball back to his skipper.

That created all the space that Lomax needed to find Waqa Blake on the left wing and after a slight moment of indecision the Fijian did the rest. In doing so he notched his 10th try of the season in the league. Only Welsby has more for Saints. Blake’s haul is good enough to place him just inside the top 10 try scorers in the competition in 2024. Another Percival goal later and Saints led 12-6.

And then a spot of deja vu. You’ll recall Ritson recklessly turning the ball over earlier by running into a Wigan crowd within a few metres of the sideline and ending up on the wrong side of it. Well, Ben Davies clearly hadn’t been paying attention. From the resulting kickoff following the Blake try the occasional Saints centre made exactly the same mistake. Davies is not a slight individual but being a centre he is not the biggest beast in the rugby league kingdom either. So it would seem a pretty whiffy idea to run - as Ritson had earlier - at four Wigan defenders who gleefully forced him into touch deep in Saints territory.

What irks even more about this is that in his post match comments Wellens revealed that they had spoken about the probability that Wigan would try to do this whenever possible. If you know this, don’t you make sure that when returning kickoffs you give the ball to a big bopper in the middle of the field rather than risk having a smaller player run it back near the edges? Saints refusal to use forwards for forwards’ jobs has long been a source of great anxiety to many of us. This was taking it to another level. 

Despite that Davies could have done it an awful lot differently. He could have run further infield before engaging the defenders or he could have brought a heavier teammate on to the ball well away from the sideline. But he didn’t. Despite having had it identified as an issue in the build up and despite having seen the consequences for Ritson earlier. Only this time it had happened later in the game and felt more significant. 

It’s not necessarily Davies’ fault but at a time when Dodd is being scapegoated by fans and his coach the 24 year-old centre seems symbolic of a weakening Saints squad. Yes there are injuries but even in a salary capped sport it is highly doubtful whether Davies quite cuts the mustard as the first alternative at centre for a team with title ambitions. 

How many other Super League teams would he get into? How many would Ritson get into? Squad depth stares you in the face as a real issue when you consider that Royle and Burns never stepped onto the field. That Wellens opted to persist with the same, tiring group of 15 players when the game was on the line at the end. His explanation was that he wanted to rotate his bigger forwards such as Paasi and George Delaney rather than introduce Royle or hooker Jake Burns. 

Royle was in the starting 13 in the loss at Castleford. Yet here he was a week later not considered trustworthy enough to enter the fray at all. Even at a time when a once plentiful second row is decimated by injury. In a game of this magnitude - or any game but especially one of this intensity - if we have two players out of 17 whom the coach just doesn’t feel he can use then it says much about our squad and how our recruitment has lost its way in recent years. You surely can’t carry passengers at this level.

Either that, or it points to Wellens as a ditherer. Unable to make a proactive decision on interchanges so he ends up limiting his options. Is that to simplify it for himself? Are four options too many for him to juggle with? If he thinks Davies is good enough to start then it’s a stretch to believe that he doesn’t think Royle or Burns can be trusted to play any part. Gareth Southgate has been heavily criticised for making reactive rather than proactive substitutions during Euro 2024 but on this evidence maybe the twice beaten Euros finalist has got nothing on Wellens. 

Saints may have got away with Davies’ error of judgement had they not conceded a repeat set through Sironen in the Wigan attack which followed. In truth they hadn’t looked like they were getting very far until then but it all changed thereafter. Ellis produced a clever offload for Farrimond to combine with Smith, Sam Walters and Adam Keighran who went over in the right hand corner. 

It was his fifth try in 14 league appearances in 2024 and with Smith’s excellent conversion it got his side back into the game at 12-12. Again Saints had failed to hold on to the lead for long enough to exert any pressure on Wigan in front of their own fans. There were less than 20 minutes left when Keighran crossed. Hold out for five or 10 more and perhaps the crowd gets restless and the players get anxious and mistakes creep in. We’ll never know.

Back to the Head Contact Files then and this time it was Ethan Havard who was sailing close to the wind. He clashed shudderingly with Lees but as the Saints prop received treatment and we all waited to see what colour the card would be there was a twist. Thaler had apparently reviewed the incident and decided that the collision was accidental head on head contact. Much like the kind which saw Nu Brown ludicrously red carded for Hull FC against Warrington in the very early weeks of the campaign. 

As such there was no penalty awarded, much less any sign of a card. I’m not in favour of players being dismissed for accidental head clashes. Not even Wigan players in the final 15 minutes of derby games with the scores level. Not even if they are called Luke Thompson. But several views of the incident have not  convinced me that the contact was head-to-head rather than with an arm or a shoulder. 

If it was then Havard must have a very hard, possibly hollow head. Which of course would be in the finest tradition of their front rowers over the last few years. In any event the MRP saw fit to hand him a £250 fine for it. Smoke, fire, etc..

Paasi can consider himself quite fortunate that a challenge he made on Tyler Dupree hasn’t drawn any further attention. Saints had been dumped into crisis mode when the ex-Salford prop charged down a Welsby kick and was able to get on to the loose ball first. 

In the resulting defensive effort Paasi certainly appeared to make contact with Dupree’s head with his shoulder. Yet it was ruled accidental on the field owing to the fact that Dupree had first come into contact with Lees which was thought to have deflected him into the path of Paasi’s shoulder. Again - and for anyone visiting these pages of a Wigan persuasion who might expect a lack of balance here - I’m not convinced.

Saints did not escape punishment from the set, however. Almost immediately Farrimond found Smith who in turn fed Eckersley. He offered one pump fake to stall the defenders before slicing in between Lomax and Percival for what turned out to be the winning score. It was an impressive display of composure from a young, inexperienced player. There was a lot of that about on the night. 

Smith could not add the extras so this thing wasn’t quite over. Saints’ last chance fell to Bell but he was unable to reel in Clark’s more than serviceable crossfield kick which landed inside the Wigan 10 metre zone. 

Perhaps there is an argument that the former Warrington man could have passed it through the hands with Saints appearing to have numbers on that right edge. But ultimately Bell’s failure to take it in was indicative of both his own strangely off key performance - one first half error was particularly slapstick- and the fact that Saints just didn’t quite offer enough as a collective to pick up the win. 

There was some late confusion when Thompson was forced to concede a dropout with less than a minute left. It looked like Saints might get a few more chances to come up with another last gasp play for the ages but instead the game clock continued to run down while Smith procrastinated over the restart like your writer winding down the last half hour in the office. As it did so Saints’ last chance finally expired. Which - while it leaves us in a much worse position than we would like - doesn’t detract from the fact that it had been a creditable effort with a lot of positives to take. 

Yet we were entitled to expect that at least, weren’t we? Not to harp on about Dodd too much but talk of the improvement in attitude and performance from the Tigers game stemming from his absence is a big, fat red herring from where I’m sitting. 

Despite the absentees most of those involved are seasoned professionals, many of whom have won every honour in the game. They have professional pride. They were never going to be so lethargic, so comatose this week. And that is before you factor in any number of boring cliches about how derbies mean more and blah, blah, blah. 

To the numbers then and it was the much maligned Ritson who led the way in metre making for Saints. His 113 were just one more than the 112 managed by Lees. The only other centurion in black and red was Clark with 104. 

Delaney earned a place in the Super League Team Of The Week. Presumably that was largely down to the fact that he managed to make  52 tackles. His wasn’t the only big defensive effort for Wellens’ side with Lees adding 46, Clark 44 and Bell 38. 

For the home side it was Marshall who made the most ground. His 136 metres is an unsurprising stat given the number of times he was able to find space and run away from Saints’ suspect right edge defence. Only some enthusiastic cover defence and Marshall’s bizarre fixation with kicking ahead - often badly - prevented him from adding to his 17 Super League tries. Following him were Eckersley with 124 and Dupree with 104. 

Havard fell just two short of Delaney’s tackle count with a round 50. Of his teammate only Ellis was required to make an equally round 30. That might serve as evidence as to where Saints were just a little bit short. 

Things might get worse for Saints before they get better. It’s unclear at the time of writing whether any of those who missed this game might return for the visit of Warrington but whoever is on deck faces a potentially difficult evening. A near full strength side was battered 31-8 by Wire in their last visit - a Challenge Cup quarter final in April. 

Sam Burgess’ side has won its last three after defeat to Salford in mid-June. And it possesses exactly the kind of threats on the edges - ably supplied by George Williams - to expose Saints’ current weaknesses. It’s arguably a more difficult game than Wigan - who do at least play in a style which is more similar to our own. Especially when you take out French and Field. 

Yet keep the faith. For all its shortcomings this is still a squad that is far too good to end up outside the playoff places. It will rediscover the winning habit soon. I wouldn’t bet on it starting this week but it’s all about your form in September and October these days.

Wigan Warriors: Eckersley, Miski, Keighran, Wardle, Marshall, Farrimond, Smith, Havard, Thompson. Dupree, Nsemba, Farrell, Ellis. Interchanges: Byrne, Mago, Hill, Walters.

Saints: Robertson, Ritson, Davies, Percival, Blake, Welsby, Lomax, Delaney, Clark, Lees, Sironen, Bell, Paasi. Interchanges: Royle, Burns, Stephens, Vaughan. 

Referee: Liam Moore

Video Referee: Ben Thaler