It’s been an emotional, sometimes head scratching period for those of us in ‘that number’ and for the wider rugby league community.
First of all we lost a legendary figure in the game in Ray French. He passed away on July 26 at the age of 85. Given how he became synonymous with rugby league for his later work with the BBC it’s odd to think that he started out in rugby union.
He played four times for England in 1961 before making the switch to league and to Saints from St Helens RUFC. Ray spent six years as a player with Saints and made over 200 appearances. They included the 1966 Challenge Cup final victory over Wigan where he featured at second row in a 21-2 win.
But it was his work as a broadcaster and commentator for which he is known throughout rugby league circles and beyond. In 1981 he replaced Eddie Waring as the BBC’s main rugby league commentator. In doing so he became the voice of the sport for many in an era before live coverage of every match.
I can still remember the Challenge Cup games and Great Britain internationals he called. His style was simple and enthusiastic, often excitable but never over the top. And though I’m sure he did his homework on all of the players he commentated on his responses to events on the field were natural. You didn’t get the sense that he had spent the previous week trying to come up with some Churchillian line to describe a try or a result like other sports commentators we could mention. Besides, whenever anyone got near to scoring a try he usually said ‘oh…he’s going for the line’ in his broad St Helens accent. Which did the job.
Ray was with the BBC until 2019 but his final TV commentary came six years earlier as Wales took on Italy in the 2013 World Cup. His Challenge Cup final highlights included the 1985 classic between Wigan and Hull and the 1996 epic in which his hometown Saints crawled out of a 14-point hole to beat Bradford Bulls 40-32 and so usher in a new era of success for the club.
By comparison the furore over the decision to extend Super League to 14 teams for 2026 seems trivial. But the direction of travel for our game is something that I am sure Ray cared deeply about. At a meeting of the clubs on July 28 the slightly barmy decision was taken to expand the top flight from the current 12 clubs to 14. This, they said in a statement, would be done by a combination of the IMG gradings and an ‘independent panel’.
The phrase ‘independent panel’ leaps out at you here. If the way that the return of previous failure Nigel Wood is anything to go by it will be anything but independent. It will consist - if not of Wood and the club owners themselves - then their stooges who will arrive with strict orders to come up with the ‘right’ 14 names. There have already been dark mutterings about whether or not to include Catalans Dragons in the new plans.
To cast them aside now after 19 years would constitute an act of self harm. Ok, so they are terrible in 2025 but they have had success. They won the Challenge Cup in 2018, the League Leaders Shield in 2021 when they went on to reach the Grand Final and they also reached Old Trafford in 2023. They give the sport a presence in Europe which is important for the game’s profile and marketability, even if they do bring all of their away fans in the same taxi.
They’re not perfect but they’re far from the only Super League club you can say that about. If there is a drive among club owners to get rid of French sides from Super League it comes from a place of xenophobia and of being too tight to pay for the travel and accommodation involved. Which couldn’t be any more small time as a philosophy. If it were up to club owners we would be subjected to derbies every other week and TV interest would likely shrink so that it consisted of a few clips on sports news bulletins in northern regions and a highlight programme buried where The Hit Man And Her used to be.
Even if the owners see that and keep the competition European it’s a mistake to go to 14 teams at the moment regardless of the make up of the league. Their just isn’t the depth in the playing pool. You only need look at the absolute state of Huddersfield Giants and Salford Red Devils in 2025 to see that. Salford have been beset with financial problems to the point where their presence in the league has meant at least one game in every Super League round has been non-competitive. Meanwhile Huddersfield have a less compelling excuse for being so awful. You may accuse me of wild speculation but I’m guessing the decision to abolish relegation based on wins and losses on the field has something to do with their level of motivation.
And it’s not the first time. Last year we had the farcical situation of London Broncos knowing they were going down to the Championship before a ball was kicked due to their lowly IMG grading. Before that we had Toronto withdrawing mid season as everyone struggled to deal with the pandemic. There’s always something. You can’t just stick Paul Vaughan in a Championship side and expect them to compete. That appears to be the only moved made as yet to try and bridge the gap.
And where are IMG in all of this? Apparently their role is only to advise but what’s the point of introducing a grading system or making any other recommendations if you’re just going to go back to what you’ve always done? Are they just not being listened to and don’t care enough to make a scene publicly? After all they have a 12-year deal and will still get paid if my dystopian vision of the game’s future comes to pass. They have been nodded to in the statement with the claim that gradings will be considered but will they? Really?
Closer to home there has been retention rather than recruitment news at Saints. Agnatius Paasi has been among the most heavily criticised of the Saints forwards this year by fans, especially during some of the team’s more anaemic performances. Yet that hasn’t stopped our club’s esteemed decision makers from extending his stay until at least the end of next season.
I get that fans moan whether there is something to moan about or not but you have to question what the people in charge have been watching. Paasi is currently averaging around 65 metres a game with ball in hand, a stat padded like Joan Collins’ shoulders by the 93 he made against a woeful Castleford side this week. And most of that was on one run which set up a try for Tristan Sailor. Sad to say that Paasi - who let’s remember will be 34 before the start of next season - has been largely ineffective this year. Even in defence he’s only offering around 14 tackles per game.
Paasi has been a decent acquisition since be arrived from New Zealand Warriors in December 2020. And it may be true that his dip in productivity owes something to the disgraceful assault on his knee carried out by John Asiata in the 2023 Challenge Cup semi-final. But even if you accept that the decline is not his fault or even due to his ageing that sort of sentiment doesn’t tend to help build title winning teams.
We should have thanked him for five years good service and let him go. That we didn’t is a decision which - other than naive sentiment - can only have been judged on finance. He’s going to be a lot cheaper than Josh Papali’i. When you tie that in with the club’s decision to vote for 14 teams in the division - which seems purely driven by a desire to have more home games without the unpopular loophole fixtures - shouldn’t be massively surprising.
Nor was Saints’ latest win, really. Having had a week off from the split round Paul Wellens’ side welcomed a Castleford Tigers side in a fair amount of disarray. There were signs of life when they were mugged by a monumentally bad video referee call in their defeat by Wigan. To which they responded by sacking Head Coach Danny McGuire. Chris Chester absolutely doesn’t want to be a coach again but is doing all the things that you see coaches do during live games. But he has given Brett Delaney a headset to make it look better. Optics.
Meanwhile Wellens has developed an aversion to picking George Whitby at halfback. He prefers Moses Mbye. It seemed reasonable not to change a winning combination after an unexpected success at Leeds but the attacking performance in the 16-4 home defeat by Leigh which followed surely justified a rethink.
Wellens did restore both Mark Percival and Daryl Clark to the lineup after they had missed the Leopards game through assorted health issues. Whitby’s bench spot went to the returning Jake Burns. Matt Whitley moved back to his favoured second row slot while Jake Wingfield dropped to the bench.
A 40-0 win sounds like something to celebrate and there were some genuinely impressive and thrilling moments. It only took Percival five minutes to get back among the try scorers even if it did look like Harry Robertson had knocked on in the buildup. Robertson himself provided the moment of the match when - close to half-time - he plucked a crossfield kick out of the air and went 90 metres to score. You had to pinch yourself a bit to make sure Saints really had scored from that sort of distance but when it sunk in it was glorious.
Meanwhile Owen Dagnall - in the side largely due to Lewis Murphy’s inability to avoid injury - bagged the seventh try of his nine-game Saints career with a mesmeric individual effort. Having found himself in space thanks to good ball movement from Morgan Knowles, Mbye, Sailor and Percival the young winger had support. But he chose the difficult - some might say wrong route - in kicking ahead to the left hand corner. Astonishingly, he won the race to touch down according to the video referee. It looked like simultaneous contact between him and a Castleford defender so that seemed fair enough.
It would be easy to get carried away by Dagnall. I remember writing some very positive things about Jon Bennison when he emerged into the first team and he’s currently on loan at Widnes. But the signs around Dagnall are awfully promising. Which could be bad news for Murphy. Or would be if we didn’t have a Head Coach who is wedded to safe options. He has largely only managed to blood youngsters because of a lengthy injury list.
The other captivating feature of this performance was Saints’ defence. We’ve established that Cas were about as threatening as half the league will be if the club owners get their way, but to record another clean sheet even in this league is something to shout about. In fact, Saints have conceded only 16 points in total over the last three league games. And they managed to lose one of those. Which shows you exactly where the real issue lies with this side.
This is the second best defence in Super League but we sit only fourth in the table. We somehow have the third best attack in terms of points scored but they can be tortuous to watch. It’s a state of affairs which probably says something horrifying about the standard of the league. But yeah, let’s bring in two more teams and get rid of anyone foreign.
Next week’s visit to the Giants looks another foregone conclusion. Good news for Saints in the pursuit of a top four place but possibly more bad optics for the league. Salford will be playing somewhere, so that’s two of next week’s six fixtures which are a write-off for neutrals.
Before that there’s the thrilling prospect of a trip to Wakefield this Friday night. The pair have already met twice but you know…loop fixtures. Saints did win the other two so that might inspire some confidence. At the risk of hubris on a Washington Sundar scale Saints can win they’ll go six points clear of Trinity who currently sit in the sixth and final playoff place. Defeat would bring Daryl Powell’s side to within one win of Saints which really doesn’t bear thinking about.
There has been the slight suggestion that Jack Welsby might be included in the squad having trained this week. He was touted to be absent for the rest of the regular season with a more modest target of returning for the playoffs. So if he can return early that would be a welcome boost. Even if it would make us look like one of those arsehole clubs from Ray French’s broadcasting pomp who pretend that their star players are out injured before conducting performative pre-match fitness tests ahead of the game. I’m looking at you, Wigan.
The Giants follow on August 17 but there are still scary fixtures ahead. Hull KR, Wigan and Leigh are all on the schedule - none of which I expect us to win - but there is another home game with Castleford for those of you looking for a safety net.
And if we miss the playoffs this year they’ll probably let 12 teams in next year.
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