Will Hope Kill Us After A Good Week?

 

Can hope really kill you?  If it does then there might not be many of us Saints fans left breathing by the time the 2025 season comes to an end.

Nobody got too excited about the one sided victory over Salford a week previously.  Literally everyone beats Salford these days as the omnishambles that is their ownership situation rumbles on.  But it was felt that the visit of a rapidly improving Leeds Rhinos side would show us where we really are.  After all it isn’t that long since Saints were nonchalantly dismissed by table toppers and Challenge Cup winners Hull KR.  Could we really compete with the elite?

No, but it turned out we could compete with Leeds Rhinos.  All the good work done in the last few months by permanently unsettled head coach Brad Arthur became a distant memory as the Rhinos reverted to much of what we have seen from them since their last title win eight years ago.  There are very few other ways to say it other than to suggest that Arthur’s side were absolute rubbish on the night.  Truly terrible.  Sixteen errors terrible.  Five of them inside their own 20m area, gifting Saints numerous chances to capitalise on great field position.  And things are not so bad that Paul Wellens’ side can’t manage that on enough occasions should you keep offering it to them.

There had been worries beforehand not only because of some mightily underwhelming form but also because of a depressing injury list.  All of Jack Welsby, Mark Percival, Lewis Murphy, George Whitby, Curtis Sironen, James Batchelor and James Bell missed this one for one reason or another. 

All of which meant that with Kyle Feldt available again Tristan Sailor reverted to fullback from his brief stint emulating his father on the wing.  Owen Dagnall took Murphy’s spot on the other flank and in so doing appeared to hasten the impending exit of Jon Bennison.  His Saints career has taken a significant nosedive since he was substituted half an hour into Saints’ last meeting with the Rhinos at Newcastle in early May.  Off contract and off the team, Bennison is one of many who may be wearing different colours in 2026. 

Whitby’s absence might have offered Sailor a chance to operate in the halves alongside Jonny Lomax had it not been for Welsby’s injury woes.  The talismanic fullback is unlikely to play again this regular season.  Sailor’s presence required elsewhere, Wellens gave the nod at halfback to Moses Mbye.  

Mbye is one of the most criticised Saints players among the fan base.  He is thought to have slow distribution from his usual dummy half role.  Many think he should just get out of the way and let Daryl Clark play 80 minutes. Or else that he should be surpassed as the dummy half relief by either Jake Burns or some other as yet unsigned individual.

Yet at halfback Mbye brought arguably a more canny and accurate kicking game than can currently be offered by any of Sailor, Welsby, Lomax or Whitby.  

If he knows one thing it is how to turn the ball over in positions which are awkward for the opposition.  None of your Lewis Dodd straight down the throat hoiks.  Whatever happened to Lewis Dodd?  Anyway, Mbye was not spectacular and it wasn’t difficult to predict what he was going to do on the last tackle in the way that it might be with a Nathan Cleary or an Adam Reynolds.  But you don’t need Nathan Cleary or Adam Reynolds at halfback to beat Leeds in this form.  Or any form, really.

Given the impact he has made in the last two weeks it is going to be hard to leave Dagnall out once the likes of Percival and Murphy return.  Yet this is Saints, a place were no injury or accident is too unlikely.  With 12 regular season games remaining there will be further opportunities for the youngster to shine.  He is actually a centre which might be a fact which is giving Deon Cross the chills.  After all, he has only just got here after having to spend years exiled in Salford and already there is a youngster coming through who could threaten his place.  There are two if you count Harry Robertson who has been playing magnificently in the threequarters  but who I suspect will be deployed elsewhere in the longer term. 

It was Robertson who came up with one of the game’s standout moments.  With Saints holding on to a slender 4-0 lead through two Feldt penalty goals a tight encounter threatened to blow open as Ryan Hall intercepted a Sailor pass deep in Leeds territory.  Hall, 87, does not quite have the pace of old but it was still a monumental achievement for Robertson to sprint all the way over from the centre position on the other side of the field to drag Hall down just before he could ground the ball.  It would have stretched his record breaking Super League try tally to 261 but the effort of Robertson, closely followed by Dagnall and Clark was indicative of the performance on the whole.  Not exactly Melbourne Storm, but not for lack of effort. And comfortably better than Leeds on the night. 

Dagnall got over for a neat try himself to seal the win in the second half before Sailor crossed in the last minute. He now has 10 tries this season despite being shunted around the team by Wellens in the face of the usual level of overly harsh criticism from a fan base expecting every overseas signing to be Andrew Johns.  

For me Sailor’s raw pace is something that the team has been missing badly since the departures of the likes of Regan Grace and Kevin Naiqama.  He is worth persevering with and judging by his post match interview demeanour he seems absolutely committed to succeeding here. A degree of slack cutting is in order.

The win leaves Saints fifth in the table and is an unexpected boost to playoff hopes.  Before the game I looked at Saints fixtures and felt a bit queasy.  Thirty points were required to finish sixth and scrape into the playoffs last term.  To achieve that Saints needed seven more wins before the Rhinos game. I could only find four that I was reasonably confident about. But a result and performance like this proves that there are winnable games on the horizon.  

We have a gimme at home to Salford again this week and I get a sense that the two games we have against both Hull FC and Leigh could be huge.  And then there is the small matter of the Rhinos again in three weeks time as the fixture compilers continue to play their amusing games with the schedule. 

How have we faced both Leeds and Warrington twice this year – three if you count the Challenge Cup encounters against both – and yet have not been anywhere near Hull FC or Leigh?  It’s quite bonkers and if I find out that it has anything to do with the fact that certain other clubs are told when to play by their wealthier footballing landlords I am not going to be responsible for my actions. 

Keeping my moaning to a minimum in what has been a good week so far I will leave you to it for now.  See you next week if hope hasn’t butchered you to death by then.

A Week Off From Losing And Bad Optics

It’s a couple of weeks since our last engagement. Awkwardly, Saints didn’t reach the men’s Challenge Cup final which gave them at least a week without any prospect of losing again. We’ll see later that they found other ways to irritate the fan base. When Saints are losing nobody does it better when it comes to maddening PR.

As we know all great eras of sporting dominance come to an end. The men’s team have experienced this during their visible decline since the last of their celebrated four in a row. Now it’s the women’s turn to face the same inevitability. Saints had won four Challenge Cups in a row until they marched out at Wembley to face a new and improved Wigan outfit on June 7. 

There has been much sniping about money spent since Wigan’s dominant performance in winning 42-6 to prise Saints fingers from the trophy that was fast becoming their birthright. The Warriors have decided to invest in their women’s team and - on this evidence - have become grimly powerful. There were ex-Saints players in Dennis Betts’ lineup, following the money. 

Yet as much as our fans sneered at them for buying success it could also be argued that they are moving the women’s game on. If every club invested similarly we might have a more even competition but one of greater quality. Of course, the reality is that many clubs can’t or won’t match Wigan’s spending. 

As such the blowouts which fuel the narrative for the naysayers will likely continue. Some one-sided scorelines are indisputably bad for the game. Bad optics as they might have said on Succession. But is that reason enough for Wigan to rein it in and let everyone catch up? Probably not. Blowouts are an issue but so is the creation of a race to the bottom.

Back to the men’s team who weren’t afforded the whole time between the May 30 loss at Hull KR and the June 15 victory at Salford to sit around watching boxsets. Instead they were pressed into some quite outstandingly absurd action with an open training session held at (checks notes…) Church Square. 

Intentions were noble with the event forming part of a campaign to encourage people to let us know what they love about St Helens. All of which reminds me of an interview once given by former Beatle Ringo Starr in which - when asked what he missed about his home city of Liverpool - replied ‘nothing’. Now I work in Liverpool so I get the sentiment but it wasn’t going to go down all that well with the tourist board. 

As for the training session itself the concrete surface and inadequate space took me back to my childhood playing impromptu games of football using a soon to be irate neighbour’s driveway as a set of goalposts. It beat jumpers on Thatto Heath Council school playing field hands down. 

I’m all for Saints getting behind this but can we not think of something which registers a little lower on the cringeometer?  It was only matched by subsequent attempts to flog us a Saints shirt for £200, so priced because it contained the signatures of the players. Oh wait…no…it was only some of the players. The identities of these players was unclear from the associated blurb but it appeared to translate to ‘whichever players happened to be around at the time’. So not only are they asking for £200 for a shirt signed by one of the weakest Saints squads in Super League history but also it was potentially pot luck which players you ended up with. Mike Rush can talk about ‘noise’ but even he might privately accept that this offer - such as it is - is desperate optics…

The only good news comes last. Saints did manage a win at the latest incarnation of Salford Red Devils. Any time you beat a side 46-4 you have to be happy, especially with Jack Welsby, Mark Percival and Lewis Murphy all out injured. Kyle Feldt returned after three months out and scored four tries - matching Tristan Sailor’s achievement against the same opposition on opening night. Joe Batchelor also came back but swiftly left the scene with another injury. Like the Grandpa Simpson gif. Curtis Sironen also picked up a knock while George Whitby will miss this week’s visit from Leeds after failing an HIA. It never rains, does it?

Owen Dagnall made a first start and scored a maiden try. Yet he could have had more had Deon Cross not turned dummying to his winger into performance art. It all leaves Saints somehow still fifth in the table and in the playoff picture. Yet defeat to the Rhinos will leave Wellens’ men six points adrift of the third placed Yorkshire side. Another League Leaders Shield is not on the cards. 

The State Of Things

We are trying something new.  I don't know about you but I am bored shitless with the weekly humdrum of a game review.  If you wanted to read a decent match report you could get it pretty much anywhere except the pro-union Tory press and the Saints website.  

So instead we are going to move towards a regular look at the general state of things.  I’m not sure how regular. It will be shorter than those 3,000 word epics we’ve all been used to and will not involve me having to rewatch anything involving Huddersfield Giants. But it will hopefully be punchier and raise more points for debate.  

So what is going on this week?  Well, just minutes after it looked like our injury crisis was abating we are heading into an even worse crisis.  It was announced today (June 3) that Jack Welsby - talismanic best player in the league sometimes a bit too stroppy Jack - will be out of action for pretty much the rest of the regular season.  Welsby injured his knee in Saints' abject 34-4 loss to a Hull KR side with one eye on their impending Wembley appearance. Actually it was more like an eye-bulging hard stare at their meeting with never-their-year try hards Warrington Wolves next week.  Yet it was not distracting enough to give our brave boys the proverbial opportunity enjoyed by cats in Hell. 

Whether you judge players by stats or by the old fashioned eye test, whatever metric is used would suggest that Welsby is several levels above his Saints team mates in terms of his importance to the attack.  Everything goes through him at fullback, which is even more important when your halfback pairing is a green around the gills manchild and an ageing, almost bionic but demonstrably fading veteran star.  So to be without Welsby has to be considered A Bad Thing. Possibly terminal for Saints’ top six ambitions. 

Adding to that predicament is the loss of winger Lewis Murphy for eight weeks. Now that sounds familiar. Didn’t the ex-Wakefield man miss a similar period of time having played just one game for his new club at the start of the season? And that game was the 82-0 stroll against 17 (or was it only 16? Or fewer?) competition winners dressed in Salford Red Devils uniforms. Actually scratch that. However many were on deck for Paul Rowley’s side couldn’t have been competition winners. They were the losers. Drawn to be Tributes in The Hunger Games. 

Saints can probably cover the loss of Murphy although his second serious injury of 2025 does raise questions about whether he is made of biscuit. That’s something we will learn in the longer term. For now number one fan scapegoat Tristan Sailor has been given the opportunity to follow in his famous father’s footsteps on the wing. As a result the bafflingly still present Coach Wello has options there. The acquisition of Deon Cross from the Salford wreckage helps as does the suggestion that Kyle Feldt will return soon. 

Remember him? Signed from NRL outfit North Queensland Cowboys after a million years scoring tries and faultlessly diffusing bombs Feldt suffered a hand injury in just his fifth appearance in the red vee. For my money he’d made a reasonable start to the unenviable task of replacing club legend Tommy Makinson but you won’t have to search social media for very long to find someone expressing the view that the Australian is shit. Personally I think his return will help.

In other saving grace news Harry Robertson was in the 17 at Hull KR after a five-game injury absence. As we sit here today he is probably the preferred option to fill Welsby’s fullback role having already had first team experience there. Also, after the attempts of Sailor in the role and the ostracisation of Jon Bennison the alternatives are as meagre as Tom Burgess’ impact on Huddersfield Giants. 

With the Wembley dust up this weekend Saints don’t have a game for another 12 days. And even then it’s Salford. Lose there and everybody gets the sack and the club folds anyway. But the June 20 visit of Leeds Rhinos seems huge given that Brad Arthur’s side - or is it Steve McNamara’s? - are one of seven sides below KR and Wigan involved in what is becoming an increasingly undignified scrap for playoff spots. Leeds sit third having massively improved under Arthur but I’m still clinging on to the tired old trope that they have a disastrous performance in them. 

Not helping the mood of the fans is the fact that former Head Coach and inventor of the cringefest that was the Rushie Roll gave an interview to a certain podcast hosted by an ex-Saint in which he diverted blame in any direction he could find except towards himself. The CEO explained that everything is fine, recruitment has been good and the only negative is the ‘noise’ from outside. That’s you and me he’s referring to. People who have the temerity to believe that their continued support for the club entitles them to an opinion. Either way, if Rush thinks everything is fine and that recruitment has been good I’ll have what he’s having. 

I’ll be back to sneer some more at the latest Saints-related developments once there are any. I’m sure it won’t be long.