Saints’ 2025 Super League campaign is finally over. And you would be forgiven for saying good riddance to it. On the face of it an eight point semi final loss to League Leaders’ Shield winners Hull KR isn’t a disaster. But it hides a multitude of sins.
Saints trailed in fifth in the regular season standings, losing 10 of their 27 league games before the playoffs. They were 10 points adrift of their weekend conquerors who now meet Wigan in the Grand Final. When you look at it that way Paul Wellens’ side didn’t deserve a shot at the title any more than little known Philadelphia slugger Rocky Balboa did in 1976. But until now there was hope.
Not helping Saints’ chances was the absence of two starting three-quarters. Kyle Feldt has missed both playoff games at the end of his debut season with Saints with back spasms. Meanwhile Mark Percival picked up a knee injury in last week’s miracle at Leeds. In came Jon Bennison - one of several leaving the club now - while Matt Whitley moved into the centres. Deon Cross filled the other wing spot with Tristan Sailor at fullback and a halfback partnership of Jack Welsby and Jonny Lomax.
In the forwards Headingley hero Shane Wright took Whitley’s second row spot. Noah Stephens was given a long overdue bench role ahead of Agnatius Paasi. He was joined there by George Delaney, James Bell and Moses Mbye. The latter pair along with Bennison and Morgan Knowles were fighting to extend their Saints careers. All will be elsewhere in 2026.
Bennison’s last Saints hurrah didn’t last long. Just eight minutes in he got up from a tackle looking decidedly groggy as he contemplated playing the ball. The medical people did their thing before whisking him away for a head injury assessment. He did not return.
By then there had already been a foreshadowing of what was to come. Joe Burgess broke down the left but his attempt to pass inside was smothered by Sailor. But it took a numerical advantage to give Rovers the push they needed to start the scoring.
Jack Welsby found himself the last man as Jez Litten kicked ahead following Elliot Minchella’s run and offload. Slightly panic stricken, Welsby grabbed a chunk of Litten’s shirt as the pair raced to get to the loose ball. It may not have justified the dramatic fall offered by the Rovers man but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a professional foul. Welsby resorted to cynicism having lost a bit of composure and paid the price.
As did Saints. As dubiously as they arrived Rovers posted eight points while Saints’ star man was in the sin-bin. The first two came from Artur Mourgue’s boot as the Robins went for goal from the ensuing penalty that came with the yellow card.
Having failed to heed the earlier lesson Saints allowed Burgess to roam free on the left again and this time he found Mikey Lewis for the game’s opening try. I say he found him. It wasn’t totally legal. You can apply all sorts of momentum related mumbo jumbo to the debate but it will still be hard to argue that the ex-Wigan winger’s pass was not forward. It just was. Significantly.
And that doesn’t mean referee Liam Moore is corrupt or incompetent or a closet Erasure fan. It just means that in conjunction with his touch judge he made a bad call which unfortunately involved just about the only thing that persistent irritant video replay cannot meddle in.
It happens. There’s a good argument that he shouldn’t then be rewarded with control of the Grand Final this weekend. Especially when you consider his place of origin. But he’s not going to turn it down if the RFL lack the imagination to think of someone more suitable. Which in the circumstances would be just about anyone who can get to Manchester and bring a whistle.
Moore and his flagger made the same mistake seven minutes later. Welsby had just returned from the bin when Oliver Gildart held off several challengers to just about keep his ball carrying arm off the ground long enough to feed his ex-Wigan teammate Burgess. But again it was forward. Plainly, undoubtedly, undeniably so. Mourgue couldn’t add the extras but at 12-0 we were already in that sort of territory where you were wondering whether Rovers had more points than Saints were likely to muster.
Despite the injustice of those two tries I can’t sit here and reasonably argue that this was the reason for Saints’ defeat. They were dominated territorially throughout. Wellens’ side couldn’t manage a single play-the-ball in the Rovers 20 metre zone throughout the entire first half. A lack of go forward in the pack and a still malfunctioning halfback combo continue to blunt Saints attack.
And Wellens appears to lack the nous or the inclination to do anything different to address the problem.
Saints actually won the second half 12-8. But this isn’t the other irksome rugby code which offers bonus points for things that are meaningless within the wider context of the game. And since there’s no tomorrow for Saints in 2025 we can’t even console ourselves with the idea that we have something to build on. Frankly the whole Wellens House Of Cards needs toppling. Send for Agent Rowley urgently.
But the red vee briefly flickered. Cross was next to…er…cross as Saints enjoyed a rare moment of attacking cohesion. Daryl Clark, Lomax and Welsby were all involved before Whitley produced the kind of one-handed offload we have seen all too rarely in 2025. That fed Cross who dummied Mourge out of Sewell Group Craven Park and into Humber. Lomax’s conversion cut the deficit to a converted try. And for a fleeting moment you might have disregarded all of the evidence of this turgid season for long enough to believe that the comeback was on.
Yet any momentum gained seemed to be lost in Saints’ next serious attack on the KR line. Bell ill-advisedly passed the ball off the ground - a fact which was referenced by Wellens in his post game comments. You could make a case that the Hull-bound man - virtually ignored by Wellens until injuries bit later in the season - was being slightly singled out by his coach. Wellens also commented on Bell’s bizarre tackle on Dean Hadley at a time when the Rovers man was not even considering being in possession of the ball. They were a couple of truly odd moments to end a disappointing final season at Saints for Bell.
In between Bell’s pair of clangers there was another what might have been moment for Saints. Robertson - switched to the left flank to partner Sailor in the post Bennison reshuffle - appeared to be tackled in the air by Tyrone May as he leapt to challenge for Saints’ 746534th bomb of the season. Moore gave nothing and Saints did not challenge. It’s far from certain that the young star would have bothered the scoreboard had he not been taken out but it was just another example of how things often play out when you are fairly inept to begin with.
Wright caught Martin high and escaped both a yellow card and the concession of any points as the former Leeds Rhino - for so long a prolific goalkicker - took over the responsibility from Mourgue but fluffed his lines. Though not as badly as Saints who - fashioning much better field position as the game wore on - saw a promising raid obliterated by Welsby’s concentration deficient dropped ball.
Thereafter Saints were extracted from their misery by Gildart. He added two more tries. First when Cross spilled a high ball under pressure from Burgess and then with 10 minutes left as the Saints right edge defence ran out of bodies.
Saints being Saints - they raged against the dying of the light as Robertson got over to reduce the arrears. They almost didn’t even catch that break as Moore referred it for a possible - i.e. non existent - obstruction by Curtis Sironen. Along with Lomax’s second conversion the try brought Saints back to within eight. Exactly the number of points they conceded while Welsby was invited to leave the field and think about what just happened after his tug on Litten’s shirt.
What remains now are a whole host of unanswered questions. With so many players either confirming their departures or off contract the much needed overhaul must begin. Wright and South Sydney back rower Jacob Host are a start in terms of recruitment but they don’t address the glaring problems in the front row and the halves which - even with more interesting tactics - would likely have killed Saints’ ambition stone dead in any case.
Knowles is the obviously seismic loss. He heads for the Dolphins in the NRL and leaves a whopping hole. In a stellar career with Saints Knowles made 246 appearances, winning four Super League Grand Finals, a Challenge Cup and a World Club Challenge. He tackles, he makes ground, he gets involved in Saints’ rare moments of ball movement and he haunts opposition kickers. You probably can’t replace all of that in one player unless you go big and spend on a proven NRL star. But with so many other areas of the team in need of improvement that looks impossible.
So what of Wellens? It’s time for him to go. This column is not normally one for advocating job losses but at the end of a third underwhelming season it becomes hard to make a case for him to continue. It’s not necessarily that results aren’t improving - although they’re not against the likes of KR and the other top sides - it’s more that he’s getting the same results in the same tedious style. He’s wedded to a conservative style of play which - as Kristian Woolf proved - is not enjoyable even when you’re winning.
Wellens has been unlucky in that he took over at the end of a winning cycle. His squad comprises players who are either coming towards the end or are still maturing. There’s a dearth of quality players operating at their absolute peak. But he’s been guilty of sticking by players who have consistently served up the same unpalatable gruel at the expense of others with mega potential. George Whitby should have played more. Surely we are approaching the moment at which he gets a longer run. And at which Robertson should get a crack at what is believed to be his best position at stand-off.
If Wellens is to go then the outstanding candidate to replace him is Paul Rowley. He’s endured a terrible year at Salford through no fault of his own as financial realities wreaked havoc. But if you cast your mind back to a year or two ago and the way he had the Red Devils playing - entertaining all around them while reaching the playoffs - he’s a perfect fit to my mind for what Saints should be.
Fans of other clubs will no doubt observe the Saints followers’ discussions around moving on from Wellens after making the semi finals and think we just have first world problems. And it is true that if you’re a Castleford or Huddersfield fan you might reflect that you would be delirious with a semi final appearance. But it’s no more than par for a club like Saints in the Super League era. If we continue to accept it and the style with which it has been achieved it’s not beyond the realms that we could find ourselves in the lower reaches as those clubs have done in recent years.
Decline is slow, steady and often unnoticed until it is too late. The road back to title standard could be arduous but that is not a reason to delay it. It must start this off season.