Saints 4 Wigan 18 - Flat Track Bullies Defer To Genuine Contenders

Saints 4 Wigan 18 - Flat Track Bullies Defer To Genuine Contenders

Don’t let the scoreline fool you. 

 

The derby with Wigan ended as the more perceptive Saints fans feared it would. Reasonably close on the scoreboard but in reality a sizeable gulf in quality between the sides. Saints went down 18-4 to the Warriors thus ending any pretensions of a top two finish.  Hopes of a home playoff tie which comes with a top four finish were also significantly jeopardised.  Another loss against a team placed higher in the league. Flat track bullies.

 

Another Reshuffle 

 

Saints went in without defensive lynchpin Morgan Knowles. The Cumbrian was out due to concussion protocols after being clunked around the head by Rhyse Martin in last week’s 12-8 loss at Hull KR. Head Coach Paul Wellens also had to do without George Delaney who had engaged in a bit of head clunking of his own on Rovers’ Eribe Doro. The young prop picked up a one match suspension for his troubles. 

 

To combat the loss of the virtually irreplaceable Knowles, Wellens took the bold step of moving Jack Welsby to loose forward. Well…it would have been bold had it not been predicted by Wigan Head Coach That Nice Matty Peet earlier in the week. 

Either he had a mole in the Saints camp or he successfully pulled off some kind of Jedi mind trick in making Wellens select the team he wanted him to. Joe Batchelor? Curtis Sironen? James Bell? These aren’t the 13s you’re looking for. Move along.

 

The Welsby move gave Deon Cross a reprieve as occasional winger Tristan Sailor slotted into Welsby’s regular fullback role. Kyle Feldt returned from his concussion enforced week off. Wellens stuck by his slow and steady halfback pairing of Jonny Lomax and Moses Mbye. It is very hard to argue that the decision wasn’t costly.

 

Delaney’s absence meant that Sironen moved into the prop rotation but only from the bench as Batchelor started at second row alongside Matt Whitley. 

 

Did The Welsby Move Work?

 

Welsby has all the skills to play loose forward the old fashioned way. He’s a playmaker with a reasonable kicking game who benefits his team when he has his hands on the ball as much as possible. The concern was in how much defence he would have to do. Having predicted or been tipped off about the switch surely Peet would get his unattractive collection of doormen to run at Welsby to sap his energy. 

 

In the event Welsby made 32 tackles. His season average across 16 previous Super League appearances this term was less than six.  Wellens was sufficiently concerned about the workload that he had to spell his star man towards the end of the first half. He trotted back out on to the field just after Jai Field’s length of the field effort early in the second half had effectively settled the contest. The conversion which followed that breakaway try ended the scoring for the evening.

 

A Good Opening Quarter 

 

And yet it had started well. Cross gave Saints a deserved lead just six minutes in. Welsby provided the assist - his 18th of the season - with a gorgeous looping pass following a link up with Lomax. Feldt couldn’t add the extra two but there was real energy inside the stadium at that point. 

 

Saints continued to dominate possession and territory in the early going.  When Wigan did get a chance to attack the home rearguard was holding up every bit as well as it does against less fancied opponents.  As much as it can be the case Saints were in control until around the 25 minute mark.  The wheels didn’t quite fall off at that point but they were definitely beginning to work themselves loose.

 

The Tide Turns 

 

It began with the inexplicable inability of anyone wearing a red vee to bring down uber consistent pensioner Liam Farrell.  The 35 year-old had a grand total of two clean breaks in 23 appearances coming into this one but that startling stat didn’t stop him riding roughshod over the league’s best defence.  A run which seemed endless from my vantage point in the North Stand set up the position from where Jake Wardle scored his side’s first try of the evening.  Perhaps this should have told us something.

 

When the far more frequently flying Liam - Marshall - added to Wigan’s lead we could probably have all gone home and watched Gogglebox.  Saints never looked likely to get back into it with their anaemic attack, continuously hamstrung by the pedestrian pace set by Lomax and Mbye

 

Misfires And Misery

 

Harry Robertson has received some criticism on social media but aside from the fact that he is playing out of position this ignores the fact that he gets very little useful ball from those inside him. On the other side Mark Percival was roundly praised for his performance but given his far greater experience some of his errors and decision making were much more damaging than any terrors perpetrated by Robertson.  

It is barely worth talking about wingers when it comes to Welloball but Cross took the one chance he had superbly while on the other wing Feldt had a strange sort of night in which he appeared somewhat passive except when a fight threatened to break out.  At no point did he threaten to add to the 17 tries he has bagged in his debut season with Saints.

 

Saints were put out of their misery early in the second half when another panicked Percival kick was scooped up by Bevan French and offloaded to Field.  The Wigan fullback raced the length of the field for his 22nd try of the Super League season.  Only Hull FC’s Lewis Martin can match that tally. Harry Smith’s second conversion of the game – he had added a penalty towards the end of the first half when Sironen came in late on Adam Keighran – put 14 points between the sides and ended the argument.  Such as it was. Saints would not have scored another 14 points if they were still playing now.

 

The Top Four – A Last Shot

 

Top four hopes are slipping away and they will likely evaporate entirely if Saints can’t win at Leigh this weekend.  Saints have not won there since the Leopards came back into Super League in 2023. Which is comforting, don’t you think? In the way that constipation is.

The sides met eight weeks ago with Adrian Lam’s side leaving St Helens with a 16-4 success. Like Wigan they weren’t allowed to run up the score and embarrass Saints but their win was more comfortable than the numbers on the scoreboard can tell you. I haven’t seen anything since that meeting to convince me that Wellens’ side can engineer a different outcome this time.

If they don’t - and if Leeds get anything at home to Catalans Dragons - then Saints will be resigned to an away date at either Headingley or the LSV in the first playoff round. A playoff place outside the top four is slightly below par from what I would have expected if you’d asked me at the start of the season. 

Having sat through 2024 and witnessed the squad changes since then I wasn’t expecting to see another League Leaders’ Shield added. But top four looked doable then. All the signs are that Saints will fall short of that. The chilling aspect of that is the very real prospect of the hierarchy focusing on the fact that we might see a slight improvement on last year’s sixth place finish. If you look at the way it’s been achieved and the continuing entertainment deficit it’s arguably been as bad if not worse.

Knowles and Delaney should come back in for the visit to the LSV which presumably means that Welsby will return to fullback and Sailor to the wing to accommodate the Lomax-Mbye Axis Of Feeble.   Which probably leaves Cross - a fine Super League player - in the undeserved position of being left out of a truly ordinary side. 

Unless the approach changes - which seems phenomenally unlikely - I can’t help feeling like Saints are ambling into a meek exit from Grand Final contention and a winter of not so much discontent but outright torment.