A Short Pause For Thought

With the current Super League round spread over two weeks Saints have no game until they host Castleford Tigers on August 1. That gives us a chance to pause, take a much needed deep breath and delve into not only what’s transpired so far in 2025 but also what lies ahead for the rest of the season and beyond. 

Despite a bumpy ride Saints are still in a position which makes qualifying for the playoffs likely. Paul Wellens’ side sit fifth in the table with eight matches remaining. They are three points clear of Hull FC in sixth and four better off than Wakefield Trinity in seventh. 

All of which is no disgrace, but it isn’t quite what I had hoped for or even what I expected before the season started. I had Saints pegged for a top four spot. That’s still possible but seems unlikely given the side’s inconsistency. But you only need to be inside that six to give yourself a chance.

A couple of pleasantly surprising victories over Leeds Rhinos and one ugly but massive win at Hull FC have eased fears about missing out on the playoffs for what would be the first time in the Super League era. That was a genuine concern just a few months ago. 

When Saints lost to the Rhinos at the Magic Weekend at the start of May there was a significant possibility of missing out on the knockout games. It was a third defeat on the spin after going down to Warrington and Wigan in April. Challenging the top sides - and Warrington - was becoming a task out of reach. You looked at the schedule at that point and couldn’t see where the wins were coming from.

The reasons for our struggles are something which - unusually - most Saints fans would agree with me on. The attack is horrific. Only Alex Walmsley gets us down the field. When he does the players charged with providing creativity look frazzled. Lacking ideas, travelling down blind alleys and some berserk last tackle plays have made us easy to defend against. 

Injuries have played a part. At one point during a game earlier in the season we were running with a three-quarter line of Jon Bennison, Dayon Sambou, Matt Whitley and Curtis Sironen. You wouldn’t overly worry a Championship defence with that combination. 

Kyle Feldt, Mark Percival and Lewis Murphy have all faced spells out while a sensible explanation of the decision to award Konrad Hurrell a one-year deal at the start of 2025 has not been forthcoming. He’s made as many first team appearances this year as I have. 

Jack Welsby is the main creative force in the side and in the league. He’s skilful, strong, surprisingly quick and plays with the kind of swagger normally reserved for stage performers. Yet he’s also out with a long term injury, blunting Saints’ attack even further. 

In the forwards both specialist hookers - Daryl Clark and Jake Burns - missed last week’s 16-4 defeat at home to Leigh Leopards with concussions. Noah Stephens is out long term after having thumb surgery. 

Hull bound pair Joe Batchelor and James Bell have been absent for most of the season through injury also. Bell was named in the initial 21-man squad for Leigh but didn’t feature. Yet he and Batchelor were fit enough to play in the reserve fixture between these two clubs. Either their decision to move east has put Wellens’ nose out of joint or he really does rate Jake Wingfield higher than either. Which baffles me more than a particularly fiendish episode of Only Connect. 

That Saints are still in line for a playoff spot owes much to their defensive solidity. They have Super League’s second best defence having conceded an average of only just over 11 points per game. Only league leaders Hull KR can top that. 

Does it mean that Wellens’ earlier assertion that 18 points should be enough to win any game is right? Maybe, but on the one hand Saints have regularly failed to reach 18 points and on the other it’s not an attitude I want verbalised by the Head Coach of a team which I was drawn to by flair and excitement as much as local pride.

So where does that team go from here? The home defeat by Leigh was a painful reminder of the limitations of the red vee. They’re just not managing to compete with the other top 6 sides. Bar Leeds whom they seem to have some kind of weird spell on. Thankfully there are enough of the league’s dead wood on the schedule to offer Saints a route to the post season.

After this week’s break Castleford Tigers will paying the first of two visits. They have improved recently despite the bonkers dismissal of Danny McGuire. They should have beaten Wigan - though everyone is beating Wigan with Bevvy out injured - and they did beat Warrington. Yet despite these signs of life you would still back Saints against the Tigers at home. 

After that there’s a trip to a Wakefield side which Saints have beaten twice already this year, before struggling Huddersfield come to St Helens on August 17. This run of games has the potential to get Saints to 30 points. By happy coincidence that figure was enough to get Wellens’ men into the six last year. 

Which is good news because it gets a little trickier after that. Schizophrenic Hull FC arrive on August 22 while Saints go to Rovers a week later. September brings a visit from Wigan and a journey to Leigh before the regular season wraps up with another home game against the Tigers. 

It may be a tad too early to speculate but if results go as I envisage Saints could face an away date at Leeds or Leigh in the first playoff round. Saints’ recent record at Headingley could make them a slight favourite but I would be less optimistic about marching into the LSV and emerging unscathed. 

But the beauty of it all, and why you can never write off the season, is that the playoff system will reward the teams with form and fitness at the right time. This will always give Saints a punchers’ chance regardless of whether performances in 2025 merit it. But yeah, to tweak the famous Mike Tyson quote just a little, everyone thinks they have a chance until they get punched in the mouth.

Whatever happens for the remainder of this year there is plenty to mull over for 2026. The club often trots out the mantra that they don’t like to comment on comings and goings until deals are done. That’s fair enough but it leaves us all wondering about a number of key issues which have to be addressed.

Perhaps most important is the question of whether Wellens will be in charge beyond the end of this season. It’s fair to say his tenure hasn’t been spectacular. Some of the performances - like the most recent one against Leigh - have been apologetic. The team selection was barmy, muddled thinking which led to having to juggle an inadequate 15-man rotation. 

And it isn’t the first time. If Wellens does go he might reflect that naming Jonny Lomax on the bench and hauling Bennison off half an hour into that Magic defeat against Leeds was a key moment where he started to show his limitations as a coach. 

He hasn’t been helped by recruitment and retention. At the time of writing the likes of Sironen, Whitley, Bennison, Hurrell and Moses Mbye are all off contract while it has been confirmed that along with Bell and Batchelor Morgan Knowles will leave the club at the end of the season. 

There are more players off contract and Lomax and Walmsley will be 35 and 36 respectively when next season comes around. And how long can injury prone Percival go on as he also enters his 30s? Deon Cross provides more than decent cover but he has also picked up an injury barely half a dozen outings with his hometown team.

On the face of it major surgery is required. Home grown youngsters like Owen Dagnall, George Whitby, Stephens, George Delaney and Harry Robertson offer hope that they will be able to step up regularly and limit the amount of tinkering required. Dagnall’s match winning moment at Leeds showed that he is comfortable at the level required. 

But can we rely on these inexperienced guys consistently? If not there is a very real danger that too many new faces will be required and the side will need time to gel. It would be reassuring for fans to get some idea of what the plan is in terms of the coaching position and the makeup of next year’s squad sooner rather than later.

At certain points this season we have been mercilessly reminded that the famed four in a row hasn’t made Saints eternally bulletproof. Other sides - in particular Leeds and Warrington - have gone through periods of mediocrity after enjoying spells of relative success. We are not immune. 

I think we’ll be fine this year but the future is somewhat cloudier. 

Crippling Vaccilation And Anaemia On A Troubling Night...

It has been a strange but significant week in rugby league.  On Tuesday (July 15) Nigel Wood’s return as interim RFL chairman was given a more permanent footing, much to the chagrin of pretty much everybody who isn’t a self-serving Super League club chairman who positively honks of cash.  Sport England were not happy bunnies either, muttering darkly that if Wood’s return to power had not been done properly and above board then funding could and would be withdrawn. 

Properly installed or not, Wood has failed before.  His return to prominence is the rugby league equivalent of electing Liz Truss back into power at Number 10.  The net result of a semi-coup from a cartel of the moneyed, who bizarrely can do no wrong in the eyes of an indecent number of the not so moneyed.  Your average person seems perfectly willing to take a bullet for a billionaire. 

t was against this backdrop that Saints hosted Leigh Leopards on Thursday night (July 17).  Perhaps thinking that if Wood is back in charge of our destiny as a sport then nothing matters any more, Saints Head Coach Paul Wellens had some fun with his team selection.  Perceived wisdom is that you fill your interchange bench with forwards so that you can rotate them sufficiently to save their energy.  But to Hell with perceived wisdom.  We’re playing Welloball so why not have two backs on the bench just for shits and giggles? 

Jon Bennison, a man for whom the wilderness has become home, was one while teenage halfback George Whitby was the other.  Saints had only one fit number 9 with recent Super League experience in Moses Mbye, so of course he was named at halfback.  It looked like more of the muddled thinking which characterised the Magic Weekend defeat to Leeds in early May, a day when Bennison became an outcast and Saints limped to a 17-4 defeat. 

Mark Percival must have picked up some sort of injury in his comeback game against the Rhinos last week as he was absent along with foot injury victim Deon Cross.  That led Matt Whitley back to the centres.  Despite being named in the 21-man squad 48 hours before kick-off James Bell did not feature which meant that Matty Lees moved from prop to cover Whitley’s second row spot and George Delaney stepped up from the bench to start. 

With Mybe initially named at halfback Jake Wingfield was the unfortunate soul asked to impersonate a hooker.  That misguided decision was seemingly remedied when Mbye went off for an HIA midway through the first half.  He returned but did so at hooker as Whitby – who had replaced him – remained at halfback.  Not that it changed much on one of those nights when Whitby reminded us all that he still has some distance to travel before his is the second coming of Alex Murphy.  B

Back rower Leon Cowen made the bench for a potential debut which left that beacon of the underwhelming Agnatius Paasi as Saints’ only experienced forward on the interchange bench.  It doesn’t feel too harsh to point out that this was a shit show of a team selection for which injuries are no sensible excuse.  To add to the madness Cowen was used for only the last two minutes, time enough for one carry.  Bennison saw no action at all and will presumably return to his natural habitat in the wilderness as soon as any of Percival, Cross, Daryl Clark, Jake Burns etc.. return. 

I had of course read the team news on Twitter, reposting it from That Saints Blog as I did.  Yet as it was read out in the stadium before kick-off I swear I could hear the low hum of an alleged 11.800 people expressing something between discontent, outrage and perplexity.  As the announcer got through introducing the players and their sponsors and arrived at Wellens I half expected the boss to be sponsored by Crippling Vaccilation. 

This has become something of a grudge match in recent years.  Saints fans don’t seem to like Leigh very much these days.  Perhaps this stems from the infamous 2023 Challenge Cup semi-final when the Leopards beat Saints on the way to winning the trophy for the first time in 52 years and in which John Asiata – now sitting in the Hull FC stands with his various injuries – ended the seasons of both Paasi and Alex Walmsley with a couple of criminal tackles which barely met the definition of that word.

But also, Leigh are good now.  And anybody who becomes good becomes unpopular.  Leigh embody this, as do Hull KR who have suddenly thrilled every rugby league fan of a different persuasion by losing a couple of games recently.  Remember when they ran last in the Covid season after the withdrawal of Toronto and everyone commented on what great rugby they played?  Those days are gone now.  It is easy to pat someone on the head if they are 11^th and last and no threat.  Not so much if they are top of the league and have  won the Challenge Cup more recently than you have. As Leigh’s threat has grown and Saints’ dominance has withered away, relations have soured.

In this latest meeting things started out ok.  It wasn’t particularly exciting.  One of those games the modern fan enjoys which are physical and include endless completed sets without the threat of anything as vulgar as scoring.  But at that point Saints were well in it.  I was hoping for a bit more.  After all I was missing the Lionesses for this.  But in the context of our pursuit of a place in the race for third place we were sailing along quite nicely.  Only a couple of minor disciplinary indiscretions  brought any points to proceedings in the first half. 

Former Saints loanee Gareth O’Brien slotted over two penalty goals to give the Leopards a 4-0 halftime lead.  One came via a Kyle Feldt dropout which went out on the full.  It was not to be one of the former North Queenland Cowboy’s better nights in the red vee.  But he wasn’t alone in that. Jonny Lomax also skewed an attempted touch finder into the third row as Saints – a team not blessed with accurate territorial kickers – saw even their own modest radar malfunction.   Still it remained tight.  As much as the Saints attack looked again like 13 blokes who had never met, Adrian Lam’s side were not exactly brimming with threat either.  Euphemistically you could describe it as attritional. A first half during which the try scoring music of the last home game – Rhinestone Cowboy anyone? – never realistically looked like being dusted off and taken for a spin.

Saints’ best chance of the first half fell to Owen Dagnall who continues to deputise for Lewis Murphy on the left wing.  He raced on to a kick towards the in-goal and desperately tried to ground the ball.  He didn’t really get close, which didn’t stop him from celebrating it in the most Ryan Atkins way imaginable.  Atkins sits eighth on the all-time Super League scoring charts with 186.  If he had been awarded every try he celebrated with genuine enthusiasm he would be well ahead of the 260 bagged by the current record holder Ryan Hall.  To read Dagnall’s body language in the aftermath you would have been convinced that he had scored.  Alas he did not, and it was a while before Saints got close again.

Isaac Liu was also denied a score after he burrowed his way over following Josh Charnley’s bat back of a Lachlan Lam bomb.  Inside the ground we never got a look at Liu’s grounding so something was clearly amiss before that.  Perhaps Charnley – who openly admitted in a roundabout way this week that he would rather be in Wigan – was offside from the kick.  Or maybe his bat back was a bat forward.  Either way the try did not stand and nobody seemed too perturbed about it. Although Derek was unavailable comment.

It is amusing to listen to the Leigh fans chant ‘Leopards Till I Die’ when what they mean is ‘Leopards Until Derek Changes The Branding Again’.  Unfortunately, by the time we heard this chant go up any amusement at their cringeworthy Bet Lynch rebrand was somewhat tempered by the inevitability of a home defeat to a side we would have expected to put 40 points on not that long ago.  It was Leigh’s first win against Saints in the town of St Helens since 1982.  Some 43 years ago.  But it likely means that third place and a home playoff are a distant dream when they were within very realistic reach before kick-off. 

In the end it was a lapse of discipline which helped end the try drought.  Saints conceded a penalty inside their own half and from the ensuing set former Brisbane Broncos, Wests Tigers and Parramatta Eels man Joe Ofahengaue crashed over.  About 20 minutes remained, which was about a minute less than should have been left on the clock after time was ludicrously allowed to run on during a captain’s challenge a few minutes earlier.  Bloody Chris Kendall.  O’Brien’s first conversion was straightforward.  Even a 10-0 deficit with a quarter of the game remaining looked a big mountain to climb for a ragged Saints outfit trying to employ a 15-man rotation against a top three side. 

Edwin Ipape should have made a decisive contribution seven minutes from the end.  He sliced through the middle of a tiring defence but chose the wrong option to his left when he had men in support on both sides.  The final Leigh try – I would say it was the killer blow if I believed that Saints would otherwise have come out of a 10-point hole – arrived when Feldt endured another catastrophe.  He has been one of the best diffusers of the aerial ball in Super League in 2025.  A one-man bomb disposal unit.  But he was bound to fluff one sooner or later.  When he did it was Ofahengaue who was on hand to profit. O’Brien’s second conversion pushed Lam’s men out to an unassailable 16-0 lead. 

Saints had not been nilled on their own patch in over 10 years.  That was in the World Club Challenge in 2015 when South Sydney Rabbitohs arrived with Russel Crowe and Djimon Honsou and left with the World Club Challenge Trophy after putting on a 38-0 clinic.  As much as they have improved and deserve their place among the genuine elite of Super League in 2025 this Leigh side do not deserve to be in that company.  So it was with some relief that Harry Robertson managed to cross for a consolation in the final minute.  It was Robertson’s ninth try of an injury-interrupted season and also provided us with Tristan Sailor’s 20^th assist of the season.                                                                                       

It was little consolation on what was a troubling night.  But perhaps we shouldn’t be too downhearted.  A couple of wins against Castleford at home and one against Huddersfield should see us collect enough points to at least reach the playoffs.  And we still have a return match with Leigh and a visit from Hull FC on the schedule – games in which more points are a realistic prospect. 

Yet there is no getting away from the fact that massive improvements on this showing will be required if we are to challenge the Leopards next time.  Saints have now scored 10 points in their last two Super League fixtures and only 23 in the last three.  The attack is positively anaemic.  An early playoff exit is on the cards unless Wellens – helped by Lee Briers – can instil a bit of joie de vivre into stulted, safety first attacking displays.  The problem is that he has not shown us at any point that he has either the appetite or the capability to do that.  He thinks we are crap because we are inpatient.  We’re crap because we’re crap.

It's a week off next week as Round 20 is split into two halves, with the remaining fixtures played on the following weekend.  What looks a distinctly Australian Origin-esque plan is actually there to make up for the lack of a mid-season international fixture.  Apparently there isn’t much call for another 50-point stroll over a French side which refuses to improve despite 19 years of exposure to the Super League standard.  It does at least mean that Saints won’t lose for a fortnight.  But they won’t score any points either. 

If the picture seems bleak console yourself with this.  Nigel is back.  Oh…

Steele Retchless, 18+ And A Lack Of Hookers…

I’m paraphrasing, but earlier this season Paul Wellens said something along the lines of ‘18 points should be enough to win any game of rugby league’. 

The purists among us balked at this proclamation.  It was anti-rugby.  It wasn’t even true, or so we thought.  Before Friday night’s attritional 6-0 win over Leeds Rhinos at Headingley Saints had won only three times this season when scoring 18 points or fewer.  They have lost on all six of the other occasions that they failed to better that tally. 

Though still the second best defence in Super League in terms of points conceded this is not the rock solid and resilient team of the Kristian Woolf era.  It cannot always be relied on. More often than not Saints will need to surpass Wellens’ magic number to secure the win. And if they want to keep me awake.

But that second best defence turned up on this occasion.  Between them Matty Lees and Morgan Knowles put in Steele Retchless-esque performances, tackling anything that moved - and a few Leeds forwards who seemed not to - as Saints stifled Brad Arthur’s recently improved side. The Saints pair made a preposterous 109 tackles between them with Lees coming up with 58 in an 80-minute stint of indefatigable industry. 

The duck egg next to the Rhinos is no mean feat. The only other side to have nilled them in Super League this year is Catalans Dragons in a truly dreadful 11-0 success in early March.  And that was a vastly different Leeds from the one which has been busy toppling Hull KR, Leigh and Warrington in recent weeks.

Aside from the Dragons the team which came closest to shutting the Rhinos out before this game was…er…Saints.  Wellens’ side triumphed 18-4 at home against the blue and amber a month ago.  In four meetings with the Rhinos in league and cup in 2025 Saints have conceded only 35 points at an average of less than nine points per game.  

One dreadful performance at Newcastle aside Saints seem to have what NRL types might call the wood over the West Yorkshire outfit in 2025. Even the sin-binning of Agnatius Paasi with 15 minutes to go for a euphemistically careless forearm to the head of Alfie Edgell was not enough to see them yield and relinquish their spankingly clean sheet. Though it does help when legend in his own back yard Jake Connor is throwing cut out balls to punters in the third row. 

Paasi was issued with three penalty points by the disciplinary committee for his indiscretion as was Jonny Lomax for a dangerous tackle early in the game. If you understand the new disciplinary system you are one up on me but the bottom line is that both have avoided suspension and are available this week. Which would have been unimaginable this time last season when suspensions were very much in vogue. Yet so would the prospect of Nigel Wood making decisions on the game’s future once more but here we are.

As impressive as this Saints performance was I also found it excruciating.  I hate these sorts of games.  I want to see mistakes, missed tackles, breaks, scoring opportunities.  I want to see Lees - an England squad member considered among the best front rowers in Super League - average more than 82 metres per game with ball in hand. And let me add that he fell some way short of that modest median in this one. Too busy tackling. Completed set after completed set leaves me cold irrespective of how difficult it is to play 80 minutes at prop and continuously tackle Mikolaj Oledzki.  

I do have to doff my metaphorical cap to Owen Dagnall both for his overall performance and in particular for providing the decisive moment in the contest. Fed by Tristan Sailor close to the left touchline the youngster got rid of Harry Newman and stepped inside Lachie Miller to score the game’s only try. It was a classy moment from Dagnall who is beginning to make a case for his inclusion even when Jack Welsby, Lewis Murphy and Deon Cross are all fit again.

Dagnall was superb but he wasn’t infallible by any means. Later, his inability to diffuse a Leeds bomb led to the Rhinos’ best opportunity to bother the scoreboard operator but Miller was rightly adjudged to have nudged Mark Percival in the back in the build up to Edgell’s effort. He may not have grounded it anyway as the Saints defence scrambled to push him towards touch.

Grumbles notwithstanding I commend the red vee boys for the achievement of the clean sheet and for securing another unlikely win which makes them all but a certainty for the playoffs. They were briefly a vertigo inducing third in the table before the Leopards surprised Rovers on Saturday (July 12). 

Currently fourth, Saints have 24 points. A couple of wins over Castleford and one over Huddersfield will get them to the 30-point mark which came with a top six spot last year and almost certainly will again. Wins against the better sides still on the schedule are almost a bonus now. So with a modicum of pressure off will the Saints attack liven things up a bit when Leigh come to town on Thursday? 

They’ll be handicapped by the lack of a natural number nine. Both Daryl Clark and Jake Burns left the Headingley scene with head injuries and are ruled out of the visit of Adrian Lam’s side due to concussion protocols. As it stands the only man likely to be in the squad with any regular Super League experience at hooker is Moses Mbye and he has been playing halfback for the last few weeks. 

It would seem a good time then to recall George Whitby to the side. He has missed the last two after sustaining a concussion but was fit enough to turn out for the reserves on the eve of this win. Unfortunately Noah Stephens will not feature after he had surgery for a thumb injury which is likely to keep him out for a couple of months. Not that he was used much anyway. Jake Wingfield has been mystifyingly preferred and his occasional stints at dummy half would seem to hint towards a more justifiable inclusion for this one.

Somehow this will be Saints’ first meeting with Leigh in 2025 despite having met both Leeds and Salford three times each in the madcap world of loop fixtures. It’s a tricky assignment but it’s an opportunity. As unlikely as it seemed after Magic or chastening defeats by Hull KR and Wigan earlier in the year Saints could still finish in the top three. Higher if you believe the Twitter theories about a Hull KR collapse. Which I don’t. But now that Saints are starting to beat other playoff contenders instead of merely punching down on bottom feeders a top three finish doesn’t seem that fanciful. 

But it will probably take more than 18 points to get the run for home started with a win against the Leopards.

If You Have A Big Gun You Pull The Trigger - Saints Are Locked In For The Top 6. Aren’t They?

Saints always qualify for the playoffs. It’s just a given. A fact of life. Like bad goalkeepers at the women’s Euros, crashes at the Tour De France and my residence at the Royal Liverpool hospital at some point within a two-year cycle.

Well guess what? I’m home and it looks like Saints are going to make it again. It wasn’t easy on the eye but Saturday’s 13-6 win at Hull FC (July 5) left Paul Wellens’ side five points clear of the black and whites who now occupy the no man’s land that is 7th place in Super League. 

There are 10 rounds to go. We still have two games against Castleford and one against Huddersfield on the schedule. Hull haven’t won at home for nearly a year. Wakefield look more likely challengers at this point. And as for Warrington. Well you shouldn’t laugh.

This scenario didn’t look likely a few short weeks ago. But it’s amazing what two fixtures against Salford can do for your prospects. Aside from that advantage Wellens has managed to move his ailing ship into this position with pragmatism. How else would you describe his decision to stick with Moses Mbye at halfback for this one rather than restore George Whitby following his concussion protocols?

If you take a purist, longer term view then you’ll hate that decision. What are we doing stifling the development of one of our brightest talents in a pivotal position in favour of an absolute trundler with a kicking game which can best be described as not as shite as everyone else’s? I totally get that argument. It’s not the end of civilisation if we miss the playoffs if it means that the likes of Whitby get valuable experience now. I mean, it’s not as if we’re going to get to let alone win at Old Trafford. Are we? Could we?

Whether we can or not if you’re Wellens your job depends on making the playoffs at least. Even that might not be enough. It’s a bare minimum. It’s alright having the more level headed fans take a long term view but they’re very much the minority. Most fans would respond to failure to make the top six by taking to Twitter to declare Wellens the worst coach they have ever seen. His glittering, monumental playing career would immediately be stripped from their memories and Wellens and his family would probably have to move to somewhere where they don’t care about rugby league and never will. Like Las Vegas.

Unfortunately for Wellens his employers would take a similar view and he would be unceremoniously jettisoned. His job description whether it is realistic or not is to win everything on offer. He’ll probably get sacked if Daryl Clark doesn’t win Johnny Vegas’ annual crown green bowling challenge in aid of the Steve Prescott Foundation. Especially if he loses to Peter Reid. Such is the lot of a Saints Head Coach.

Wellens is not helped by injuries at the moment. All clubs have to deal with this sort of thing as we move into the latter half of the summer but Saints back line really is decimated. At one point when Owen Dagnall - himself a veteran of six first team appearances - went off for a head injury assessment Saints were running with a three-quarter line of Kyle Feldt and Harry Robertson on the wings but Matt Whitley and Clark in the centres. Fortunately Dagnall was able to return while in the meantime John Cartwright’s brain dead team didn’t have the smarts to test those edges.

The latest reason for this patching up job is the loss of Deon Cross. He’s played just one more game for Saints than Dagnall but now faces three or four weeks out with a foot injury. Add him to Mark Percival, Jack Welsby and Lewis Murphy and you start to see where Wellens’ options are narrowing. If we stunk in attack before - and we did - then the whiff is probably a little bit worse now. 

Roberton was consistently Saints biggest running threat. He made one ridiculous break which led to the second of Feldt’s brace of tries, while another of the youngster’s forays inspired even Mbye to beat one or two defenders before dying in possession like he’s supposed to. 

Between them Mbye and Feldt were responsible for Saints’ main non-Robertson related attacking weapon. There’s not a lot of variety on Saints’ last tackle plays but on this day the Mbye/Jonny Lomax bomb to Feldt on the wing came up trumps just about often enough. It’s not quite as reliable as the Philadelphia Eagles’ tush push/brotherly shove - which is on the verge of being banished from the NFL as a cheat code -  but reliable enough.

That one such play was sufficient says a lot about both FC’s attacking display and Saints’ excellence in defence. Morgan Knowles’ kick pressure on ex-Wigan busted flush Cade Cust was one of the plays of the game. It was that sort of game were attacking ideas were at something of a premium. Played between the sort of teams for whom attacking ideas are at something of a premium. Besides, if you have a big gun you pull the trigger. So said former New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress right after he shot himself in the leg at a Big Apple nightclub some years ago. 

In the context of Saints’ ailing attack the contribution of Feldt and Tristan Sailor has been vital. Despite criticism of our newest overseas recruits they have 24 tries between them. That’s 27% of all tries scored by Saints in Super League this season. And only the top two have scored more tries. Thanks Salford. In addition Sailor has 18 assists, more than anyone except coach’s favourite Lachlan Lam and Shaun Wane’s least favourite Jake Connor. 

It would be remiss not to pay due credit to the other determining factor in this massive win, the boot of Lomax. Chipping in with the odd bomb to Feldt when Mbye was indisposed the captain also had to once again shoulder the goal-kicking responsibilities. He’s fourth choice for the role which again emphasises the state of health in this squad right now. Yet his touchline conversion of Feldt’s first try proved invaluable. Quite whether the skipper is reliable enough to justify going for two points from a penalty after only 10 minutes is another debate. That again is another indication of where we are as an attacking force. But there too Lomax did what was required of him.

And then the top hat was firmly planted atop this success when he dropped a goal to push Saints out to a virtually unassailable 13-6 lead with just two minutes left. It was a fairly routine opportunity set up by Harvey Baron’s catastrophic error under another Saints skyscraper. Yet anyone who saw the two earlier efforts from Mbye which barely left the ground will have appreciated it. Turns out pragmatism also comes with two free abysmal drop goal attempts.

The news that Leeds Rhinos and Leigh Leopards are next on the agenda might be a slight reason to question my earlier confidence about Saints’ top six hopes. If the Rhinos team which has just taken care of Hull KR turns up at Headingley on Friday night (July 11) there could be trouble brewing. Yet when Saints last met Brad Arthur’s side an expected thrashing somehow metamorphosed into an 18-4 win. As good as they are when things are going well Leeds are still at the anything could happen stage of their development. As any side featuring Harry Newman and James Bentley would be.

The same could be said of Leigh who were also busy beating top two opponents last time out. There’s no recent head-to-head form to go on as the July 17 meeting will be the first between Saints and Leigh this year. Thanks Salford. But what we can say is that Adrian Lam’s side have jumped to fourth spot in the table on the back of four wins in their last five. They did draw with Hull earlier in the season so there’s that. 

I’m already confident but one win from these next two huge top six matchups should seal the deal for Saints. They always qualify for the playoffs…

Trying To Jazz Up A Routine Win

 I bring you disappointing news to start with. I am writing this week’s sardonic missive from a hospital bed. I’ve had another disagreement with my transplanted kidney such that my water is as thick as Jake Connor and the colour of Ringo Starr’s submarine.

As if I hadn’t suffered enough having first been able to attend the Salford game on Sunday afternoon. This was always going to be something of a non event. Red Devils coach Paul Rowley claimed that he could see ‘green shoots’ before the game but declared himself unhappy with his side’s performance afterwards. He thought they should have been more competitive. 

Yet if he was surprised by Saints’ 58-0 victory he must have been just about the only one. The loan acquisition of 2018’s Danny Richardson was never going to be enough in itself to bridge the massive chasm that now exists between Salford and just about every other Super League side. 

On the subject of what used to be known as scrum halves Head Coach Paul Wellens chose not to bring George Whitby back into the 17. The youngster had to sit out last week’s win over Leeds Rhinos after suffering a head knock in the game prior to that against (checks notes…) Salford Red Devils. To be fair to Moses Mbye he virtually solved the ancient conundrum of our kicking game against the Rhinos but it was still slightly surprising to see him retained at the expense of Whitby, who had to settle for 18th man duties.

Saints scored 11 tries in all and - in the week when That Saints Pod discussed ways of improving the atmosphere and general match day experience - the concept of signature music for individual players when scoring a try was reintroduced. Those of you old enough might remember the late 1990s-early 2000s when every mention of Sean Long’s name by the stadium announcer was accompanied by James Brown’s ‘I Feel Good’ and Keiron Cunningham’s by the slightly less critically acclaimed ‘Tubthumping’ by Chumbawumba. 

All of which became somewhat ironic when Cunningham the Head Coach accused his many critics among the fan base of ‘tubthumping’ when they suggested that the likes of Jack Owens, Lama Tasi and Tommy Lee would probably not get us to the promised land. 

Of the latest versions Kyle Feldt’s was a bit of a head scratcher. His hat-trick of four-pointers were celebrated with Glenn Campbell’s Rhinestone Cowboy - presumably a reference to the 11 years he spent with North Queensland in the NRL. Yet celebrating his association with his former club seems a little off to me. Like Manchester United playing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ every time Michael Owen scored for them. All five times.

Yet some of those old tunes from the turn of the century are still considered appropriate. If you had a penny for every time you heard Dr Alban’s ‘Sing Hallelujah’ at Saints you wouldn’t be going to work tomorrow. That cult classic followed two more tries from Owen Dagnall in another impressive performance on the wing. I thought he deserved more than the Dr Alban treatment. Especially for his bizarre second half try for which he almost accidentally kicked ahead before comfortably winning the race to the ball to touch down.

As Morgan Knowles gets closer to the exit door it feels like every try he scores could be his last for the club. His score in this one courtesy of a great line run and a perfectly timed pass from Mbye was his first in nine games. He has a maximum of 14 games in a Saints shirt remaining before he becomes a Dolphin. If he doesn’t manage to squeeze any more in this was a fitting way to close the account. And the music? Spandau Ballet’s ‘Gold’. Sometimes the fans do get to choose the playlist. 

Later, Daryl Clark’s try prompted a blast of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Dancing In The Dark’. I haven’t heard the crowd singing that one so I’m assuming our Oscar Wilde-like team behind the scenes just found something to rhyme with Clark.

Feldt is just back from injury so it was worrying that he picked up a knock which saw him hand over the goalkicking responsibilities to Jonny Lomax after Saints’ second score. The skipper did a more than serviceable job landing seven of his nine attempts. Feldt had missed both of his early efforts after he was originally chosen to take over the role from the absent Whitby. 

Hopefully Feldt is ok despite his reluctance to swing Saints play Hull FC, Leeds and Leigh in the next three. All are rivals in the playoff race so it would not be a good time to worsen an injury list that already includes Jack Welsby, Lewis Murphy, Mark Percival, Curtis Sironen, James Batchelor and James Bell. Harry Robertson also left the scene around 15 minutes before the end. Hopefully that was something of a Wellens declaration rather than yet another injury concern for the versatile young star currently filling in at centre. 

That gave Saints a 20-0 half-time lead with no prospect of the green shooting Red Devils making a game of it. You would have been forgiven for thinking that you might rather have been somewhere else. Maybe you were. The crowd looked rather more sparse than the 10,192 announced. And Roger Moore in Live And Let Die was on the telly. Or you could see several hundred artists that men my age haven’t heard of on the BBC’s coverage of Glastonbury. 

Saints piled on more points in the second half. It was so routine that Chris Hill passed an HIA which has to be one of the more familiar sites in rugby league. I do hope that it is the ruse of a veteran operator and not his employers and he playing fast and loose with his help. He seems to pass these tests with more frequency than Jack Bauer passed polygraphs. I hope I sail through what is potentially my final blood test tomorrow with similar ease. 

Along with Dagnall two more Saints managed to cross for a brace. One time scapegoat Tristan Sailor has 12 for the season and would have had a triple of his own had he not passed the ball to Jake Burns behind the try line. It was all a bit disrespectful for my tastes and risked being wiped out as it prompted a video review to make sure Burns was onside. Yet Sailor’s stock is rising among fans and outsiders now to the extent that he is among those nominated for the player of the month award. MC Hammer’s ‘U Can’t Touch This’ in case you were wondering. 

For his part Burns pinched another from dummy half. He did well but I confess to not being convinced by him in the long term. My overriding feeling every time he injected himself into the action was that he’s a bit small. He can’t be much taller than me and Jimmy Krankie. At 25 he’s no emerging youth star either. His time is now. But is it with Saints? 

And so to Hull FC on Saturday (July 5) when hopefully I won’t have to use my internet data on my iPad because the NHS WiFi can’t cope with Sky Go. I’m already having to settle for tennis and women’s football instead of the cricket. A win against the black and whites would be hugely helpful to our playoff chances. And is quite plausible since Hull’s rejuvenation under John Cartwright only seems to extend to playing away from home. 

The doctor has just been in. There’s a reasonable chance I’ll be getting discharged tomorrow.