It’s the hope that kills you.
Saints’ 2024 season was eventually put out of its misery but not before an unexpectedly heroic effort as George Williams’ golden point drop-goal put Warrington just one win away from Old Trafford.
The result was expected. Predicted by almost every Saints fan even if the pundits still think this is peak Woolf era. Even the more delusional among us struggled to make a case for Paul Wellens’ side pre-game. This observer suggested we would do well to get within 20 points of Sam Burgess’ side. After all, they’d already beaten Saints three times in 2024 by an aggregate score of 71-20. They’d also finished third in the Super League table during the regular season while Saints had set this tie up by crawling into the sixth and final playoff spot with late season wins over Huddersfield and Castleford. So it was not the result but the manner and the closeness of it which caused the surprise.
As much as it was a hard luck story in the end it is hard to argue that Saints’ season deserved any better. They were not worthy of a semi-final spot in all honesty, much less a trip to a Grand Final. They have been functional at best when everyone was fit and anywhere from average to outright diabolical when the injuries took hold. It’s only the barmy nature of the mediocrity friendly playoff system which made further progress even a faint possibility. Yet to have hope, so much hope, and have it snatched away through mostly suicidal decisions and slapstick farce still feels cruel.
Saints welcomed Alex Walmsley back into the side after he had been a late withdrawal from last weekend’s match at Leigh. That sent George Delaney back to the bench while former Wolf Daryl Clark got his first start since August 8. With Moses Mbye still out with a calf problem Jake Burns kept his place in the 17 but started on the bench.
Warrington had their own front row talisman back as Paul Vaughan returned after a three-game suspension. Rodrick Tai came in at centre to replace Arron Lindop while Joe Philbin was on the bench as Max Wood missed out from the team which had beaten London Broncos 54-0 a week earlier.
The madness began early. Tommy Makinson - playing what turned out to be the last of his 336 games for the club - looked into the early evening sunshine as the opening kickoff sailed towards him and shelled it just a few metres from his own line. That start didn’t instil any great belief among us doubters that Saints would make a game of this. That feeling was only exacerbated when Toby King went over in the ensuing set. Danny Walker, Josh Drinkwater, Matt Dufty and Williams were all involved in the move that saw King go over on the left. Josh Thewlis couldn’t convert from the touchline but it seemed as if a proverbial marker had been laid down by the home side.
Yet Makinson hasn’t accrued 336 Saints games by falling in a heap in response to an error. This here is a champion player. A five time Grand Final winner and a former Golden Boot winner to..er..boot. Within 10 minutes of his auspicious start he had Saints right back in it. Clark, Lewis Dodd, Jonny Lomax and Jack Welsby shifted the ball towards Makinson on his familiar right wing where he performed a trademark flying finish at the corner. It feels like no player has profited more from the change of rule which saw corner posts become part of the field of play rather than a part of touch. A bit like when a young kid named Lew Alcindor was the only slam dunker in town.
Referee Liam Moore sent it up to Chris Kendall for review as a try which proved crucial in its award. Thanks to a handily positioned water carrier (or was it Ade Gardner on a secret mission?) and a melee of bodies attempting to make the tackle the TV angles were inconclusive on whether any part of Makinson’s body was grounded in touch before he got the ball down. In such cases the on field call rules and Saints led 6-4 after Mark Percival’s touchline conversion.
Moore seemed reluctant to award a try without consultation from Kendall all night. He was at it again when Saints astonishingly increased the lead. This time it was Percival, going over after another combination featuring Clark, Dodd, Lomax and Welsby. It looked a pretty obvious grounding by the Saints centre as he stretched over but Moore called for confirmation anyway. Perhaps like the players referees are especially terrified to make mistakes in playoff game. You can’t completely avoid that but I suppose the best way to minimise it is to refer everything to the man in the booth. Even if that man is Chris Kendall. Percival converted his own try and Saints were in rare air for 2024, two scores up against a fellow top six side.
It got better just after the half hour mark. It was Makinson again, scoring what would prove to be the last of his 207 tries for Saints. This time the review from Moore was much more necessary as Makinson slid over under a pile of bodies. Welsby had provided the assist and again the on field call of a try helped. There was no clear evidence to suggest that Makinson’s hand had come off the ball at any point. A moment where the ball was not visible was not enough to overturn the call. Percival could not add the extras this time but Saints still led 16-4.
Indiscipline with and without the ball has plagued Saints this year. Failure to do the basics right can be costly and we saw that again before halftime. Joe Batchelor - whose 2024 form has come under greater scrutiny after a few stellar years earned him his own Shakira inspired terrace ditty - played the ball incorrectly on his own 20 metre line to gift Warrington an opportunity to get back in it before the break. They didn’t sniff at it.
When it came it was Matty Ashton who got over, benefiting from Williams’ imaginative round the corner offload after he had been found by a combination of Drinkwater and Walker. Thewlis then showed that he can land them from the sideline - crucially as it turned out - to pull Warrington to within a converted try at 16-10. It stayed that way until the break, with just the sense that the failure to hang on to that two score lead at that point could be decisive.
These days Wire rely on more ex-Wigan players than is good for anyone. Here’s hoping it sinks them when they inevitably discover that it isn’t their year again. However three such former cherry and white wearers combined for the try that tied the scores in the second half. Sam Powell is very much second fiddle to Walker but found time during his spell on the field to hit Williams whose sublimely timed pass hit King in stride.
King - who was a Grand Final winner with Wigan while on one of the strangest loans since diversity champion Joey Barton went to Marseille - was able to get between Sione Mata’utia and Makinson to slice over untouched. Another Thewlis conversion had us locked up at 16-16 with just over a quarter of the game to play.
And so to the suicide and slapstick in the week that Joaquin Phoenix’s mentally ill Joker makes his return to the big screen. Excuse me for not laughing when - with 15 minutes left - Saints took a shotgun to both of their metaphorical feet. In possession inside their own half Saints were looking to build another attack to go back in front on the scoreboard. Instead, Clark produced a pass from dummy half as bad as anything we’ve seen from Saints in this most underwhelming, difficult of seasons.
It went behind everyone for whom it may have been intended, hit the deck and was batted by Drinkwater to King. He handed it on to Ashton and the race - if you can even call it that - was over. Nobody got near the Warrington flyer as he crossed for his second try. Thewlis’ third conversion gave Burgess’ men a 22-16 advantage.
At this point you doubted whether Saints had it in them to get up off the floor. It would have been easy - reflecting on how the year has gone and what was likely to happen had Saints got through to a semi-final - to accept their fate. But they had one more ultimately cruel twist in store for us. One more shred of hope for us to cling to in this relative binfire of a season. I say relative because there are plenty of clubs with players, coaches and fans who would love to be as underwhelming as Saints have been. Leeds Rhinos and Hull FC - to name but two - currently aspire to underwhelming. For those clubs and others like them it is a rung up the ladder from utterly abject.
Anyway. Saints scored again. With less than two minutes on the clock and thoughts turning to the launch of the Christmas merchandise range Burns, Dodd, Lomax and Mata’utia moved the ball sharply out to the left where Jon Bennison was able to squeeze in an at the left corner. Again Moore’s initial suspicion of a try needed corroboration from Kendall but somehow, miraculously, Saints were within a Percival conversion of extending this bonkers campaign into a period of golden point extra time.
Percival kicks around 73% of his goals this term. Compare that to almost 89% landed by the league’s top goalscorer Marc Sneyd of Salford. Though Percival has improved he still has the look of a man who’s only doing the job until the recruitment people find someone to do it regularly. He always looks nervous, almost haunted by previous failures. Still, if he missed at least we could say we put up a good fight in a game that we all expected to lose comfortably.
But he didn’t miss.
Nervelessly, he curled an absolute thing of beauty right through the middle of the posts as time expired. Joy. Maybe it was going to be our year again after the disappointment of last year and not only not managing to secure that fifth Grand Final win in a row but also of having to hand over the trophy to the grubbiest mitts in sport. It could be, we allowed ourselves to think. Well, it certainly wasn’t going to be Warrington’s year so why not?
Into the extra period. Warrington had first use, and were greatly helped when Batchelor was penalised for a ruck infringement as Walker got up to play the ball. Slowly, methodically they worked their way downfield and acquired perfect position for Williams to end this thing. His drop-goal attempt was met with the kind of rejection that the late Dikembe Mutombo would have been proud of. Out of nowhere Morgan Knowles had thrown himself at the attempt as if his very life depended on it. It was a spectacular play and it gave us even more of that duplicitous bitch they call hope.
Now Saints had their chance to set up for a one-pointer. Only the Wire defence stood firm. Still inside their own half on tackle six Saints needed a good kick downfield. The ball was with Lomax. Captain. Leader. Legend. Surely he would buy us some territory and lead the charge for the defensive effort to follow. Yet the skipper saw something else. He faked before running right. Assessing his options he found Percival. He clearly did not rate Saints chances of launching a telling raid on the last play and so decided to hoof it to the other end. Game management is the preferred euphemism.
Unfortunately, decisively, he shanked it. The man who had been so icy under pressure in converting Bennison’s try at the end of normal time shat the proverbial bed on this one and hoiked it straight into touch on his own 40 metre line.
Sitting there watching Warrington up-the-jumper their way to the inevitable, I considered the irony. Saints - a team we have all rightly criticised for being far too obsessed with conservative rugby and making the safe play under Woolf wannabe Wellens - killed themselves with their ambition. Nine hundred and ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine times out of a million in 2024 Lomax kicks that ball away and sets the defence up in enemy territory.
Yet it’s hard to be too critical. We want expansive rugby. We want risk and excitement. Yet we also want to win. We want it all and we’ll be the first to criticise any tactical decision that doesn’t pay off even if it’s one we’ve been longing for all year. That’s fandom.
There was no Knowles-Mutombo synergy this time as Williams made sure with his second attempt. No small measure of relief for the home fans and the crashing disappointment of one who has been teased with something special among the Saints fans. It’s finally over for another season.
It’s over for good as far as their Saints careers are concerned for Makinson, Dodd and Mata’utia. In all seven players will leave with the much derided Waqa Blake also going along with Sam Royle, Ben Lane and McKenzie Buckley. They’ll be remembered with varying degrees of fondness or otherwise. For now, the dark muttering has already started around how Konrad Hurrell and Ben Davies managed to avoid the exit list This is sport. This is Saints. There’s always something to get irritated or even exasperated by. Expect those two to remain on most fans’ shit list.
Twenty-tweny-five will bring with it some much needed changes. Hometown boy Lee Briers lends his next big thing in coaching credentials to the cause while another much derided figure in Laurent Frayssinous departs. North Queensland Cowboys winger Kyle Feldt comes in to replace Makinson while the speedy Tristan Sailor and Lewis Murphy will hopefully add some much needed pace to the back division.
Can we challenge again?
It’s the hope that kills you.
Warrington Wolves: Dufty, Thewlis, King, Tai, Ashton, Williams, Drinkwater, Yates, Walker, Musgrove, Nicholson, Bateman, Currie. Interchanges: Vaughan, Powell, Philbin, Harrison.
Saints: Welsby, Makinson, Mata’utia, Percival, Bennison, Lomax, Dodd, Walmsley, Clark, Lees, Whitley, Batchelor, Knowles. Interchanges: Paasi, Bell, Delaney, Burns
Referee: Liam Moore
Video Referee: Chris Kendall