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darkly that if Wood’s return to power had not been done properly and above board then funding could and would be withdrawn.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 11th 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 20th 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…
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