Season Preview 2025

The Story Of 2024

If you want the shortened version then it’s an alarming slide into mediocrity. But let’s see if we can add some detail. After all, alarming slides into mediocrity don’t just happen. Do they? 

Saints had suffered a last gasp semi-final heartbreaker of a moment in 2023. Paul Wellens’ side’s last act of that season was to helplessly watch on as Sam Tomkins sliced through some tired defence to go over and put Catalans Dragons in the Grand Final. It ended a run of four consecutive Grand Final wins for the red vee, but at that time there were few people doubting that they would be right back in contention at the sharp end of 2024.

Saints did make the playoffs - extending their record of being the only side to have reached the Super League knockout stages since the concept was reintroduced in 1998. But the scraping on their way in was audible as they finished in the sixth and final spot available. It was their lowest league position in 30 years since finishing eighth in the 1993/94 season. 

A chronic lack of pace scuppered Saints time and again, particularly during a five-game losing streak between June 23 and July 26. Champion sides don’t tend to go on five-game losing streaks. Pessimism prevailed. Despite the aforementioned lack of pace Wellens did not escape criticism. His religious devotion to the conservative style of play employed successfully by his predecessor Kristian Woolf was also a huge factor in the slump. If you haven’t got the speed to go around your opponents then you had better come up with something better than five drives and a kick. 

As we have seen before the goodwill offered to a playing legend while he attempts to iron out the flaws only goes so far. You get the feeling that 2025 is a decisive year for Wellens. The arrival of another ex-player - Lee Briers - after successful spells as number two at Wigan and Brisbane has given many hope that if nothing else we’ll see a bit more in the way of entertainment around the back of Tesco this year. But even if that happens will it be enough to keep Wellens in charge?

In the end Saints’ exit from the playoffs - although arriving early at the first hurdle - was surprisingly respectable. Those who feared a shellacking from third placed Warrington under first year head coach Sam Burgess instead saw their side go down by just a single point. George Williams’ drop goal proved the difference. Gallant indeed, but viewed in the context of being 16-4 up at one point it could also be argued that it was a massive disappointment. 

Warrington also ended Saints’ interest in the Challenge Cup, only rather more emphatically at the quarter-final stage. Wire came to town in mid-April and ran all over Saints to the tune of a 31-8 trouncing. In a season of disappointments this was perhaps the biggest. Saints had already suffered defeats to Salford Red Devils and Catalans Dragons at that point but few saw the thrashing handed out by Warrington coming.

The 2025 Recruits 

With a squad that is ageing (and slowing down) before our very eyes there has been some attempt to address that with the recruitment for 2025. Kyle Feldt isn’t a young man but he has been one of the most consistent wingers in the NRL during the last 12 years with the North Queensland Cowboys. He’s pretty much a like for like replacement for Tommy Makinson on the right flank. 

Makinson’s 14-year stay with the club yielded five Super League Grand Final wins, a Challenge Cup success and a World Club title. And the small matter of being the best player in the world of international rugby league in 2018, thus picking up the Golden Boot. When he wasn’t in the lineup you noticed. Now he’s in France with Catalans Dragons it’s vital that Feldt brings his best form.  If he does then he will do the hard yards under territorial pressure and he’s a fine finisher. Not Makinson, but an able replacement.

Addressing that chronic pace issue Saints have also acquired fullback or stand off Tristan Sailor from Brisbane Broncos. Son of former Broncos and Australia winger Wendell Sailor, Tristan’s speed is a desperately needed asset. The fact that he made only 16 appearances across two seasons at the Broncos is a slight worry, but then Saints don’t have Reece Walsh and Ezra Mam standing in his path to selection. The hope is that he will gel effectively with Jack Welsby and make Saints much more dynamic in attack. 

The final recruit is another speedster from the NRL but of the English variety. Lewis Murphy made his name at Wakefield Trinity, impressing enough to catch the eye of the Sydney Roosters scouts. Sadly, he failed to make an appearance for the Roosters in the whole of 2024 and has returned home. Still, we’ve seen enough from his time in West Yorkshire to know that he can shift a bit. His arrival is a boost to those people sick of seeing safe but unspectacular Jon Bennison occupying a wing spot. When he didn’t play in 2024 we were left with Tee Ritson, a slower than advertised operator for whom the Championship is arguably the definition of a ceiling. 

So Who’s Out?

As well as Makinson there are a couple of other notable departures. Lewis Dodd believes his own press enough to have taken the bold step of joining South Sydney Roosters while Sione Mata’utia has retired from the game aged 28 to pursue other opportunities. 

The buzz around Dodd began when his nerveless drop goal secured a World Club Challenge victory over Penrith Panthers at the start of 2023. Since then his overall contribution has been underwhelming. The debate raged throughout last year on the reasons for that. Was it the achilles injury he suffered a couple of years ago or was it the shackles placed on him and the team by the uber conservative Wellens? We will no doubt find out by keeping an eye on the NRL this term. 

Meanwhile for Saints it means that one of Sailor or Welsby will be paired in the halves with 34 year-old Jonny Lomax, currently held together by blue-tac. Still, Moses Mbye is still around and he was arguably Saints’ most impressive field general throughout 2024. If all that fails then youngster George Whitby waits in the wings.

The other members of The Departed are a mixture of fringe players, youngsters and recruitment disasters. In the latter category Waqa Blake had a fine NRL career behind him when he arrived at Saints at the start of 2024. Yet to call his performances underwhelming would be a monumental understatement. 

The former Penrith Panther and Parramatta Eel endured a woeful year in Super League. We all remember his mystifying failure to score at Leigh when given the freedom of the Sports Village. That was the nadir but the truth is that his one season at Saints was littered with performances which can only be described as half arsed.  He was so poor in fact that he has not been able to secure a deal with either a Super League or NRL club and will spend 2025 with the once mighty Bradford Bulls. Which is kind of fitting when you consider how far both player and club have fallen. A perfect metaphor, the pair deserve each other.

Sam Royle was always going to struggle to get game time in a crowded second row unit. Even with Mata’utia gone he still had Curtis Sironen, Joe Batchelor and Matt Whitley to contend with. Royle made 28 first team appearances following his 2021 debut. He is a steady performer who never let anyone down in that time but nor did he convince you that he was ever going to dislodge any of his more illustrious colleagues from the 17 on a regular basis. 

Ben Lane (2 appearances) and McKenzie Buckley (1 appearance) are the others to leave the club although it has recently been announced that Jonny Vaughan and Dayon Sambou have agreed to join Wigan from 2026 when their contracts expire. In the context of new deals for Harry Robertson, Whitby, Noah Stephens and Owen Dagnall it is perhaps a surprise to see Vaughan make the move. He had a breakthrough year in 2024 making eight first team appearances. 

What’s The Expectation?

There is always a high level of expectation at Saints even if the evidence of the previous season would seem to advise caution. When you have won as regularly as Saints have and when you’ve never missed a playoff series you don’t get a pass for a season or more of quiet underachievement. There’s no time for cruising when you’re serving a fan base which has developed an increasing amnesia on what it’s like to be also rans.

Bringing in Briers and former Bradford boss Eamon O’Carroll to help Wellens has only heightened the optimism among many. And besides, we can’t be as bang average as we were last year, can we? 

What Will Really Happen?

If Saints repeat last season’s ennui then it’s very hard to see Wellens making it through the year. The anticipated change to a more entertaining style of play may help him but ultimately it’s a results business. On the plus side Super League hasn’t been at its strongest in recent years. Without a spark Saints may still prosper just because of the sheer depth of their squad compared with most others. And can the likes of Hull KR and Leigh go again and feature in the big playoff games come September? 

A policy of cautious optimism might be the path for Saints fans to take. A pre-season shoeing by Salford in Morgan Knowles’ testimonial hasn’t steadied any nerves even if that was a Saints side shorn of half of its regulars. There’ll be huge pressure on Wellens to overturn that result when the Red Devils come to Saints for the Super League opener in a week’s time (February 15). He won’t shirk it, but as we sit here today there have to be major doubts about his long term future at the helm.

Up The Jumper - Are modern tactics killing our game?

I should have written this sooner. In the midst of Saints’ four Grand Final wins in a row between 2019-2022 I was one of the few dissenting, often mocked voices who wasn’t fulfilled by the ride. Now, with Justin Holbrook and Kristian Woolf part of our history and on the back of two straight titles for our friends over the hill it’s just going to be viewed as sour grapes by many. Especially with trailing in meekly in sixth place. But indulge me, you never know.

I’m not sure it began with Saints’ unprecedented run of success but the game has changed for the worse. It has gradually become a stulted and frustrating spectacle since the advent of full-time professionalism in 1996. Change is  healthy - even if I am personally spooked by it in both my personal and working life - but there’s been a definite shift towards a more conservative style not only at Saints but across the sport. Perhaps I feel it more keenly with Saints because they are my team and because I grew up watching them in an era when entertaining people rather than winning trophies seemed to be the preoccupation. But I think Paul Wellens’ side are far from the only culprits.

You could make a very obvious argument that the move towards a more safety first approach has improved standards. If you could match both at their peak the Saints teams of my youth would very probably be blasted off the park by even the underwhelming rabble led by Wellens last year. The 2024 Saints would be too strong and powerful for a side fitting in games between shifts at the warehouse. Or the office for those who had managed to acquire a couple of O Levels. Yet they would also be undone tactically as the current mob pound down the middle - risk free - dominating possession even more thanks to the old boys’ penchant for an improbable offload or a chip and chase. Yet I know which I’d rather pay to watch.

Woolf was only one of many coaches to have success through minimising risk.  This really started in Australia. Even as I enjoyed seeing the Saints of the 80s fail gloriously by pushing the envelope it was clear at international level that the two hemispheres adopted differing philosophies. Back in then it was said that not only did the Australian Test teams of the day have greater depth to call on but they also employed a more rigid style of play which usually gave them a competitive advantage. Great Britain had stars like Ellery Hanley, Garry Schofield and later Martin Offiah and Jason Robinson who were arguably the equal of any Aussie in their position. But what we poms didn’t have was a mentality which prized winning over putting on a show. And I didn’t mind that. It was far more enjoyable to watch and the victories we did manage to pull off were all the more memorable for it.

Minimising risk is now the be all and end all. The most successful coaches all know that in the professional era - when the physical gap between teams at the top is narrower than in days gone by - errors can be critical. Fatal even. If you can all but eradicate them you can dominate possession. If you can do that then you are statistically far more likely to win. Eventually the team that has spent more time on the more physically draining activity of defending will run out of gas. I don’t know who it was but somebody once described the Australian State Of Origin games - now considered the highest level of the sport even above internationals - is just 34 blokes running at each other until one of them falls over. This is possibly an extreme way of phrasing it but it is largely true. The dullards on Sky Sports and the BBC don’t call it an energy battle for nothing. 

It’s not just at the very top where set completion is king. Although they are not as good at it the risk free possession game has filtered down to the lesser teams. A team that makes two passes from the ruck is considered expansive these days. But even in games between sides with lower expectations the tendency is to stick to one. The role of the hooker at dummy half is lauded because he has become what passes for the most creative force in the side. Halfbacks - scrum halves in old money - are for tactical kicking.

The timing and accuracy of your number nine’s passes straight from the play-the-ball are crucial in allowing he forwards running on to it to make ground and get their team down the field. If you have James Roby and Alex Walmsley in these roles for over a decade you’ll go far. Roby had a great all round game but Walmsley lives and dies by how many metres he makes, all slavishly calculated in this data heavy era. Like Roby he’s a legend of the game but I’d argue that he doesn’t have the power to take your breath away in the way that George Mann did. But what did he win I hear you ask?

The open, exciting rugby league of my youth is considered naive and far less likely to succeed now. Consequently there is far less attacking variety in the game. When teams get into the opposition 20 metre zone they might abandon the up the jumper stuff but it’s replaced by a predictable attacking structure that has become almost uniform across the sport. One ball handler  runs sideways vaguely threatening the defensive line. As he does so one potential receiver runs the line for a short ball but invariably becomes a lead dummy runner whose job is to attract defenders to create space for another runner who goes ‘out the back’. There is precious little variation on this to the point where the ball almost always ends up with the wingers to apply the finish. What’s more, all wingers tries essentially look identical. Even the flying finishes pioneered by Tommy Makinson when the rules were changed to make the corner post part of the field of play have become humdrum as so many others have perfected the skill.

The amount of stats and data now available to coaches and other employed analysts contributes further. The obsession with completion rates trumps any desire for anything off the cuff - even among most fans. The position of most supporters is that if their team has won a big game then they have been entertained. And if they haven’t they don’t care. Log on to your team’s Twitter after every big game and there will be scores of posts lambasting anyone guilty of a rare attempt at creativity that hasn’t come off. Ask the coach about it and he’ll lament that ‘we lost our structure’ or - to quote one of Wellens’ more berserk favourite criticisms of the dullest Saints team in living memory in 2024 - ‘we tried to score on every play’. We haven’t done anything like that since Neil Holding’s pomp. And I don’t mean with a microphone.

As the tactics have changed so too have the roles of the players and even the way they shape their bodies. They all look the same to the extent that Sione Mata’utia played prop, second row and in both centre positions in 2024. It’s not because he’s some kind of Swiss army knife of a player. It’s has more to do with second rowers and centres becoming indistinguishable from each other in much the same way that props and loose forwards have latterly. 

Ball playing loose forwards like Hanley, Paul Sculthorpe, Andy Farrell and Kevin Sinfield have been phased out of the game altogether. They are just not produced by youth systems any more. Everyone is a battering ram - a situation exacerbated by the amount of interchanges now available to coaches. 

These are necessary for player welfare but do nothing to improve the spectacle. If defences don’t tire they will be ever more comfortable to defend the predictable attacking raids they face. Many foamed at the mouth at the defence on show in Saints’ 8-4  2020 Grand Final win over Wigan. I felt that - save for it’s incredible denouement of the Makinson drop-goal hitting the post to set up Jack Welsby’s astonishing winning try - it was one of the most boring games of any sport I have ever seen. Unlike many Saints fans I have never sat through it again since writing the review for these pages.

You may feel that much of this is nostalgia from a child of the 80s. But there are some things about that era that I don’t miss. One hundred year old grounds with no accessible toilets or refreshment kiosks spring to mind. Nor do I miss the first come-first served, let them in free attitude towards wheelchair users at the time. I’d much rather pay for my ticket and have good facilities and a great view than be let in for nothing but have to get in an hour before kick-off in all weathers just to make sure I’d be able to see the pitch. And professionalism has at least stopped Wigan from winning everything even if it doesn’t feel like it right now. 

However I genuinely feel like the game is crying out for a club to achieve success a different way. Another evolution needs to happen. At a time when we are trying to compete with other sports for new eyeballs tedium is the last thing we can afford. Dare I say it more change. Even if it isn’t Saints, won’t somebody please win a title by taking risks, having an actual centre or loose forward in their side or by being chock full of pace instead of power. 

At the moment it feels a long way away.

Warrington Wolves 23 Saints 22 - Playoff Eliminator Review

It’s the hope that kills you. 

Saints’ 2024 season was eventually put out of its misery but not before an unexpectedly heroic effort as George Williams’ golden point drop-goal put Warrington just one win away from Old Trafford. 

The result was expected. Predicted by almost every Saints fan even if the pundits still think this is peak Woolf era. Even the more delusional among us struggled to make a case for Paul Wellens’ side pre-game. This observer suggested we would do well to get within 20 points of Sam Burgess’ side. After all, they’d already beaten Saints three times in 2024 by an aggregate score of 71-20. They’d also finished third in the Super League table during the regular season while Saints had set this tie up by crawling into the sixth and final playoff spot with late season wins over Huddersfield and Castleford. So it was not the result but the manner and the closeness of it which caused the surprise. 

As much as it was a hard luck story in the end it is hard to argue that Saints’ season deserved any better. They were not worthy of a semi-final spot in all honesty, much less a trip to a Grand Final. They have been functional at best when everyone was fit and anywhere from average to outright diabolical when the injuries took hold. It’s only the barmy nature of the mediocrity friendly playoff system which made further progress even a faint possibility. Yet to have hope, so much hope, and have it snatched away through mostly suicidal decisions and slapstick farce still feels cruel.

Saints welcomed Alex Walmsley back into the side after he had been a late withdrawal from last weekend’s match at Leigh. That sent George Delaney back to the bench while former Wolf Daryl Clark got his first start since August 8. With Moses Mbye still out with a calf problem Jake Burns kept his place in the 17 but started on the bench.

Warrington had their own front row talisman back as Paul Vaughan returned after a three-game suspension. Rodrick Tai came in at centre to replace Arron Lindop while Joe Philbin was on the bench as Max Wood missed out from the team which had beaten London Broncos 54-0 a week earlier. 

The madness began early. Tommy Makinson - playing what turned out to be the last of his 336 games for the club - looked into the early evening sunshine as the opening kickoff sailed towards him and shelled it just a few metres from his own line. That start didn’t instil any great belief among us doubters that Saints would make a game of this. That feeling was only exacerbated when Toby King went over in the ensuing set. Danny Walker, Josh Drinkwater, Matt Dufty and Williams were all involved in the move that saw King go over on the left. Josh Thewlis couldn’t convert from the touchline but it seemed as if a proverbial marker had been laid down by the home side.

Yet Makinson hasn’t accrued 336 Saints games by falling in a heap in response to an error. This here is a champion player. A five time Grand Final winner and a former Golden Boot winner to..er..boot. Within 10 minutes of his auspicious start he had Saints right back in it. Clark, Lewis Dodd, Jonny Lomax and Jack Welsby shifted the ball towards Makinson on his familiar right wing where he performed a trademark flying finish at the corner. It feels like no player has profited more from the change of rule which saw corner posts become part of the field of play rather than a part of touch. A bit like when a young kid named Lew Alcindor was the only slam dunker in town.

Referee Liam Moore sent it up to Chris Kendall for review as a try which proved crucial in its award. Thanks to a handily positioned water carrier (or was it Ade Gardner on a secret mission?) and a melee of bodies attempting to make the tackle the TV angles were inconclusive on whether any part of Makinson’s body was grounded in touch before he got the ball down. In such cases the on field call rules and Saints led 6-4 after Mark Percival’s touchline conversion. 

Moore seemed reluctant to award a try without consultation from Kendall all night. He was at it again when Saints astonishingly increased the lead. This time it was Percival, going over after another combination featuring Clark, Dodd, Lomax and Welsby. It looked a pretty obvious grounding by the Saints centre as he stretched over but Moore called for confirmation anyway. Perhaps like the players referees are especially terrified to make mistakes in playoff game. You can’t completely avoid that but I suppose the best way to minimise it is to refer everything to the man in the booth. Even if that man is Chris Kendall. Percival converted his own try and Saints were in rare air for 2024, two scores up against a fellow top six side.

It got better just after the half hour mark. It was Makinson again, scoring what would prove to be the last of his 207 tries for Saints. This time the review from Moore was much more necessary as Makinson slid over under a pile of bodies. Welsby had provided the assist and again the on field call of a try helped. There was no clear evidence to suggest that Makinson’s hand had come off the ball at any point. A moment where the ball was not visible was not enough to overturn the call. Percival could not add the extras this time but Saints still led 16-4.

Indiscipline with and without the ball has plagued Saints this year. Failure to do the basics right can be costly and we saw that again before halftime. Joe Batchelor - whose 2024 form has come under greater scrutiny after a few stellar years earned him his own Shakira inspired terrace ditty - played the ball incorrectly on his own 20 metre line to gift Warrington an opportunity to get back in it before the break. They didn’t sniff at it.

When it came it was Matty Ashton who got over, benefiting from Williams’ imaginative round the corner offload after he had been found by a combination of Drinkwater and Walker. Thewlis then showed that he can land them from the sideline - crucially as it turned out - to pull Warrington to within a converted try at 16-10. It stayed that way until the break, with just the sense that the failure to hang on to that two score lead at that point could be decisive.

These days Wire rely on more ex-Wigan players than is good for anyone. Here’s hoping it sinks them when they inevitably discover that it isn’t their year again. However three such former cherry and white wearers combined for the try that tied the scores in the second half. Sam Powell is very much second fiddle to Walker but found time during his spell on the field to hit Williams whose sublimely timed pass hit King in stride. 

King - who was a Grand Final winner with Wigan while on one of the  strangest loans since diversity champion Joey Barton went to Marseille - was able to get between Sione Mata’utia and Makinson to slice over untouched. Another Thewlis conversion had us locked up at 16-16 with just over a quarter of the game to play.

And so to the suicide and slapstick in the week that Joaquin Phoenix’s mentally ill Joker makes his return to the big screen. Excuse me for not laughing when - with 15 minutes left - Saints took a shotgun to both of their metaphorical feet. In possession inside their own half Saints were looking to build another attack to go back in front on the scoreboard. Instead, Clark produced a pass from dummy half as bad as anything we’ve seen from Saints in this most underwhelming, difficult of seasons. 

It went behind everyone for whom it may have been intended, hit the deck and was batted by Drinkwater to King. He handed it on to Ashton and the race - if you can even call it that - was over. Nobody got near the Warrington flyer as he crossed for his second try. Thewlis’ third conversion gave Burgess’ men a 22-16 advantage. 

At this point you doubted whether Saints had it in them to get up off the floor. It would have been easy - reflecting on how the year has gone and what was likely to happen had Saints got through to a semi-final - to accept their fate. But they had one more ultimately cruel twist in store for us. One more shred of hope for us to cling to in this relative binfire of a season. I say relative because there are plenty of clubs with players, coaches and fans who would love to be as underwhelming as Saints have been. Leeds Rhinos and Hull FC - to name but two - currently aspire to underwhelming. For those clubs and others like them it is a rung up the ladder from utterly abject. 

Anyway. Saints scored again. With less than two minutes on the clock and thoughts turning to the launch of the Christmas merchandise range Burns, Dodd, Lomax and Mata’utia moved the ball sharply out to the left where Jon Bennison was able to squeeze in an at the left corner. Again Moore’s initial suspicion of a try needed corroboration from Kendall but somehow, miraculously, Saints were within a Percival conversion of extending this bonkers campaign into a period of golden point extra time. 

Percival kicks around 73% of his goals this term. Compare that to almost 89% landed by the league’s top goalscorer Marc Sneyd of Salford. Though Percival has improved he still has the look of a man who’s only doing the job until the recruitment people find someone to do it regularly. He always looks nervous, almost haunted by previous failures. Still, if he missed at least we could say we put up a good fight in a game that we all expected to lose comfortably. 

But he didn’t miss. 

Nervelessly, he curled an absolute thing of beauty right through the middle of the posts as time expired. Joy. Maybe it was going to be our year again after the disappointment of last year and not only not managing to secure that fifth Grand Final win in a row but also of having to hand over the trophy to the grubbiest mitts in sport. It could be, we allowed ourselves to think. Well, it certainly wasn’t going to be Warrington’s year so why not?

Into the extra period. Warrington had first use, and were greatly helped when Batchelor was penalised for a ruck infringement as Walker got up to play the ball. Slowly, methodically they worked their way downfield and acquired perfect position for Williams to end this thing. His drop-goal attempt was met with the kind of rejection that the late Dikembe Mutombo would have been proud of. Out of nowhere Morgan Knowles had thrown himself at the attempt as if his very life depended on it. It was a spectacular play and it gave us even more of that duplicitous bitch they call hope. 

Now Saints had their chance to set up for a one-pointer. Only the Wire defence stood firm. Still inside their own half on tackle six Saints needed a good kick downfield. The ball was with Lomax. Captain. Leader. Legend. Surely he would buy us some territory and lead the charge for the defensive effort to follow. Yet the skipper saw something else. He faked before running right. Assessing his options he found Percival. He clearly did not rate Saints chances of launching a telling raid on the last play and so decided to hoof it to the other end. Game management is the preferred euphemism. 

Unfortunately, decisively, he shanked it. The man who had been so icy under pressure in converting Bennison’s try at the end of normal time shat the proverbial bed on this one and hoiked it straight into touch on his own 40 metre line. 

Sitting there watching Warrington up-the-jumper their way to the inevitable, I considered the irony. Saints - a team we have all rightly criticised for being far too obsessed with conservative rugby and making the safe play under Woolf wannabe Wellens - killed themselves with their ambition. Nine hundred and ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine times out of a million in 2024 Lomax kicks that ball away and sets the defence up in enemy territory. 

Yet it’s hard to be too critical. We want expansive rugby. We want risk and excitement. Yet we also want to win. We want it all and we’ll be the first to criticise any tactical decision that doesn’t pay off even if it’s one we’ve been longing for all year. That’s fandom. 

There was no Knowles-Mutombo synergy this time as Williams made sure with his second attempt. No small measure of relief for the home fans and the crashing disappointment of one who has been teased with something special among the Saints fans. It’s finally over for another season.

It’s over for good as far as their Saints careers are concerned for Makinson, Dodd and Mata’utia. In all seven players will leave with the much derided Waqa Blake also going along with Sam Royle, Ben Lane and McKenzie Buckley. They’ll be remembered with varying degrees of fondness or otherwise. For now, the dark muttering has already started around how Konrad Hurrell and Ben Davies managed to avoid the exit list This is sport. This is Saints. There’s always something to get irritated or even exasperated by. Expect those two to remain on most fans’ shit list.

Twenty-tweny-five will bring with it some much needed changes. Hometown boy Lee Briers lends his next big thing in coaching credentials to the cause while another much derided figure in Laurent Frayssinous departs. North Queensland Cowboys winger Kyle Feldt comes in to replace Makinson while the speedy Tristan Sailor and Lewis Murphy will hopefully add some much needed pace to the back division. 

Can we challenge again? 

It’s the hope that kills you.

Warrington Wolves: Dufty, Thewlis, King, Tai, Ashton, Williams, Drinkwater, Yates, Walker, Musgrove, Nicholson, Bateman, Currie. Interchanges: Vaughan, Powell, Philbin, Harrison.

Saints: Welsby, Makinson, Mata’utia, Percival, Bennison, Lomax, Dodd, Walmsley, Clark, Lees, Whitley, Batchelor, Knowles. Interchanges: Paasi, Bell, Delaney, Burns

Referee: Liam Moore

Video Referee: Chris Kendall