I should have written this sooner. In the midst of Saints’ four Grand Final wins in a row between 2019-2022 I was one of the few dissenting, often mocked voices who wasn’t fulfilled by the ride. Now, with Justin Holbrook and Kristian Woolf part of our history and on the back of two straight titles for our friends over the hill it’s just going to be viewed as sour grapes by many. Especially with trailing in meekly in sixth place. But indulge me, you never know.
I’m not sure it began with Saints’ unprecedented run of success but the game has changed for the worse. It has gradually become a stulted and frustrating spectacle since the advent of full-time professionalism in 1996. Change is healthy - even if I am personally spooked by it in both my personal and working life - but there’s been a definite shift towards a more conservative style not only at Saints but across the sport. Perhaps I feel it more keenly with Saints because they are my team and because I grew up watching them in an era when entertaining people rather than winning trophies seemed to be the preoccupation. But I think Paul Wellens’ side are far from the only culprits.
You could make a very obvious argument that the move towards a more safety first approach has improved standards. If you could match both at their peak the Saints teams of my youth would very probably be blasted off the park by even the underwhelming rabble led by Wellens last year. The 2024 Saints would be too strong and powerful for a side fitting in games between shifts at the warehouse. Or the office for those who had managed to acquire a couple of O Levels. Yet they would also be undone tactically as the current mob pound down the middle - risk free - dominating possession even more thanks to the old boys’ penchant for an improbable offload or a chip and chase. Yet I know which I’d rather pay to watch.
Woolf was only one of many coaches to have success through minimising risk. This really started in Australia. Even as I enjoyed seeing the Saints of the 80s fail gloriously by pushing the envelope it was clear at international level that the two hemispheres adopted differing philosophies. Back in then it was said that not only did the Australian Test teams of the day have greater depth to call on but they also employed a more rigid style of play which usually gave them a competitive advantage. Great Britain had stars like Ellery Hanley, Garry Schofield and later Martin Offiah and Jason Robinson who were arguably the equal of any Aussie in their position. But what we poms didn’t have was a mentality which prized winning over putting on a show. And I didn’t mind that. It was far more enjoyable to watch and the victories we did manage to pull off were all the more memorable for it.
Minimising risk is now the be all and end all. The most successful coaches all know that in the professional era - when the physical gap between teams at the top is narrower than in days gone by - errors can be critical. Fatal even. If you can all but eradicate them you can dominate possession. If you can do that then you are statistically far more likely to win. Eventually the team that has spent more time on the more physically draining activity of defending will run out of gas. I don’t know who it was but somebody once described the Australian State Of Origin games - now considered the highest level of the sport even above internationals - is just 34 blokes running at each other until one of them falls over. This is possibly an extreme way of phrasing it but it is largely true. The dullards on Sky Sports and the BBC don’t call it an energy battle for nothing.
It’s not just at the very top where set completion is king. Although they are not as good at it the risk free possession game has filtered down to the lesser teams. A team that makes two passes from the ruck is considered expansive these days. But even in games between sides with lower expectations the tendency is to stick to one. The role of the hooker at dummy half is lauded because he has become what passes for the most creative force in the side. Halfbacks - scrum halves in old money - are for tactical kicking.
The timing and accuracy of your number nine’s passes straight from the play-the-ball are crucial in allowing he forwards running on to it to make ground and get their team down the field. If you have James Roby and Alex Walmsley in these roles for over a decade you’ll go far. Roby had a great all round game but Walmsley lives and dies by how many metres he makes, all slavishly calculated in this data heavy era. Like Roby he’s a legend of the game but I’d argue that he doesn’t have the power to take your breath away in the way that George Mann did. But what did he win I hear you ask?
The open, exciting rugby league of my youth is considered naive and far less likely to succeed now. Consequently there is far less attacking variety in the game. When teams get into the opposition 20 metre zone they might abandon the up the jumper stuff but it’s replaced by a predictable attacking structure that has become almost uniform across the sport. One ball handler runs sideways vaguely threatening the defensive line. As he does so one potential receiver runs the line for a short ball but invariably becomes a lead dummy runner whose job is to attract defenders to create space for another runner who goes ‘out the back’. There is precious little variation on this to the point where the ball almost always ends up with the wingers to apply the finish. What’s more, all wingers tries essentially look identical. Even the flying finishes pioneered by Tommy Makinson when the rules were changed to make the corner post part of the field of play have become humdrum as so many others have perfected the skill.
The amount of stats and data now available to coaches and other employed analysts contributes further. The obsession with completion rates trumps any desire for anything off the cuff - even among most fans. The position of most supporters is that if their team has won a big game then they have been entertained. And if they haven’t they don’t care. Log on to your team’s Twitter after every big game and there will be scores of posts lambasting anyone guilty of a rare attempt at creativity that hasn’t come off. Ask the coach about it and he’ll lament that ‘we lost our structure’ or - to quote one of Wellens’ more berserk favourite criticisms of the dullest Saints team in living memory in 2024 - ‘we tried to score on every play’. We haven’t done anything like that since Neil Holding’s pomp. And I don’t mean with a microphone.
As the tactics have changed so too have the roles of the players and even the way they shape their bodies. They all look the same to the extent that Sione Mata’utia played prop, second row and in both centre positions in 2024. It’s not because he’s some kind of Swiss army knife of a player. It’s has more to do with second rowers and centres becoming indistinguishable from each other in much the same way that props and loose forwards have latterly.
Ball playing loose forwards like Hanley, Paul Sculthorpe, Andy Farrell and Kevin Sinfield have been phased out of the game altogether. They are just not produced by youth systems any more. Everyone is a battering ram - a situation exacerbated by the amount of interchanges now available to coaches.
These are necessary for player welfare but do nothing to improve the spectacle. If defences don’t tire they will be ever more comfortable to defend the predictable attacking raids they face. Many foamed at the mouth at the defence on show in Saints’ 8-4 2020 Grand Final win over Wigan. I felt that - save for it’s incredible denouement of the Makinson drop-goal hitting the post to set up Jack Welsby’s astonishing winning try - it was one of the most boring games of any sport I have ever seen. Unlike many Saints fans I have never sat through it again since writing the review for these pages.
You may feel that much of this is nostalgia from a child of the 80s. But there are some things about that era that I don’t miss. One hundred year old grounds with no accessible toilets or refreshment kiosks spring to mind. Nor do I miss the first come-first served, let them in free attitude towards wheelchair users at the time. I’d much rather pay for my ticket and have good facilities and a great view than be let in for nothing but have to get in an hour before kick-off in all weathers just to make sure I’d be able to see the pitch. And professionalism has at least stopped Wigan from winning everything even if it doesn’t feel like it right now.
However I genuinely feel like the game is crying out for a club to achieve success a different way. Another evolution needs to happen. At a time when we are trying to compete with other sports for new eyeballs tedium is the last thing we can afford. Dare I say it more change. Even if it isn’t Saints, won’t somebody please win a title by taking risks, having an actual centre or loose forward in their side or by being chock full of pace instead of power.
At the moment it feels a long way away.
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