Billed as a potential League Leaders Shield decider, the meeting of the top two turned out to be something of a phoney war.
Saints were barely tested by an under strength Catalans Dragons side which had won 12 league games in a row prior to this one. On a wet day it was all a bit of a damp squib for any neutrals hoping to see the two form sides lay it all on the line in pursuit of top spot.
Catalans coach Steve McNamara protested his innocence, citing injuries as the reason for the absence of a sizeable chunk of his first team. Already set to be without Sam Kasiano, Matt Whitley, Josh Drinkwater and Tom Davies, McNamara then revealed on game day that ex-Wigan pair and professional crowd-antagonisers Sam Tomkins and Mickey McIlorum would also miss out.
Tomkins looked the biggest loss on paper but the Dragons had managed to beat Saints in Perpignan in May without him. In fact, Tomkins quite often finds a reason to be elsewhere when the name of Saints appears on the fixture calendar. Yet added to the other losses in personnel it always looked a tough ask for the French side. Despite their recent winning run they would be second favourite to win at Saints with a full deck. They were never getting over Kristian Woolf’s relentless grind machine with half a team sitting it out.
The easy thing would be too take McNamara’s sick note on behalf of his players at face value. It has been a busy period recently in a season congested by the complications which Covid still creates. It may well be the case that he just ran out of troops at the wrong time. On the other hand you wouldn’t put it past the Alan Partridge tribute act to have hatched some grand psychological plan. The League Leaders Shield is treated with such distain by the leading clubs that it’s easy to believe that McNamara isn’t wholly invested in winning it. It’s not just him. Last year Woolf handed it to Wigan on a silver platter when he chose to play a clutch of academy stars in a pivotal game at Salford. Fans won’t even remember as long as you win the Grand Final.
By contrast Woolf did not consider this to be the right time to be tinkering with the line-up. A recent outbreak of Covid in the camp following the Challenge Cup final has left Saints with a little work still to do to guarantee a favourable seeding going into the playoffs. Only Matty Lees and long term absentees Theo Fages and James Bentley missed out, with Regan Grace and Agnatius Paasi back in the fold having missed the win at Hull FC five days previously. It all meant that the star of that show - Jack Welsby - had to start this one on the bench. He was joined there by Sione Mata’utia as Woolf resisted the temptation to restore the skull-capped former Australian international to the starting line-up. Instead he stuck with Joe Batchelor who after a long spell struggling on the fringes of the squad is now starting to establish himself as a regular. Perhaps Mr McManus will not need to write any cheques to replace Bentley when he heads to Leeds for next year. Bentley has been named in the 21-man squad for this week’s home clash with Castleford while Morgan Knowles has not so it will be interesting to see how Woolf’s back row shapes up in that one.
Mata’utia has only just come back from a suspension and when he came off the bench he found himself on the end of another debatable decision. Debatable but not the outrageous injustice that it has been labelled. The former Newcastle man was one of two players sent for a 10-minute breather by referee Liam Moore, the other being Catalans young back rower Joe Chan. Mata’utia went after being judged guilty of a late hit on Benjamin Jullien, and that after he had himself been the victim of a hit off the ball which got Chan in trouble. Both were yellows in the current climate. There is little debate about Chan’s as the ball was not even in the vicinity when he hit Mata’utia, while the Saints man was only a step late but enough to leave himself open to exactly the interpretation that he got from Moore. The authorities are cracking down on any physical infringements regardless of intent. Most fans don’t like that but it’s up to the players to learn the lessons. Besides, the modern game has become so structured and stale tactically that it only opens up when players start disappearing from each side. If nothing else yellow cards can sometimes aid the level of entertainment on show, but that is probably not a reason to increase their use. Player safety should be the primary concern.
There was quite a bit of entertainment early on in this one from a Saints point of view. They raced into an 18-0 inside the first 16 minutes and at that point were threatening to run up a big score. Tommy Makinson - who has found his try scoring touch again recently after a lean spell - was first to get over after an expert looping pass from Jonny Lomax. Makinson hasn’t had nearly enough of this kind of service in Saints middle of the field orientated attack, but showed again why he remains one the classiest wingers anywhere in the rugby world. Lachlan Coote’s first conversion put Saints 6-0 up and the lead was doubled when Lewis Dodd demonstrated more of his natural gifts to score Saints second. The build up was ugly, with Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook’s pass knocked backwards by Alex Walmsley, but there was Dodd to make a difficult pick up and grounding in the sodden conditions look decidedly easy.
Next to score was Grace on his return to the side. Coote was the main architect, shifting the ball left to the Welshman who jinked inside some pretty flimsy Dragons defence to touch down. Grace’s combination of speed and balance was too much for the Catalans edge defenders who flapped and flailed ineffectively at his ankles.
From that point on things got a bit more disjointed. The cohesion was lacking between Makinson and Grace when the former’s crab-like run and ill-advised pass forced the former into touch with the help of a couple of grateful Dragons defenders. Knowles was then pinged for a high shot which set up the position from which the French side were able to register their first points. Teenage half Cesar Rouge was filling in for Drinkwater and it was his pass which sent Mathieu Laguerre through the Kevin Naiqama-shaped hole in the Saints defence. We will miss what the Fijian brings offensively when he leaves the club at the end of the season. Perhaps not so much his penchant for flying out of the line and leaving the kind of gaping holes in the rearguard which allowed Laguerre to sneak over. James Maloney had also been involved in the build-up and his conversion pulled the Dragons back to 18-6 on the scoreboard.
Six minutes later things got a bit tetchy, with players running in from both sides to engage in some bog-standard and fruitless push and shove after a dubious challenge by Joel Thompson on Rouge. There wasn’t a lot of arm wrapping involved in Thompson’s effort which relied heavily on his shoulders and was arguably too high. Yet Moore chose not to send Thompson to the sin bin primarily on the basis that Rouge was falling which caused the contact to be higher than it might otherwise have been. Which is confusing when you consider that he did not take intent into account when sin-binning Mata’utia for his challenge on Jullien 25 minutes later. Before then it was Chan who was marched for 10, with Coote extending Saints lead to 20-6 from the resultant penalty.
The closest either side to scoring again before the break was when Batchelor’s errant pass fell kindly for Fouad Yaha only for the Dragons winger to suffer a calamitous brain fart and meekly prod the ball into touch with his boot. Had he kept the ball in play he might have taken some stopping, but you got the feeling even at that point that the Dragons didn’t have what it was going to take to stop Saints taking the win.
That eventuality was all but confirmed 10 minutes into the second half when Batchelor added his name to the scoresheet. Saints short kicking game has been a real feature of the attack since Dodd replaced Fages but this time it was Lomax dabbing through for the former York City Knights back rower to touch down. Another Coote goal pushed Saints advantage out to 20 points at 26-6 and the argument was pretty much settled.
Mata’utia’s yellow card arrived soon after and the Dragons took immediate advantage. Alrix Da Costa scooted out from dummy half close to the line and released a well timed pass for Mickael Goudemand to cross for his side’s second try of the afternoon. Maloney again converted but at 26-12 with just over 25 minutes remaining there still wasn’t too much for Saints to be alarmed about. Coote added another penalty goal five minutes later after Da Costa went high on Dodd. Though it grates a little that this Saints side kicks for goal more often than your average rugby union side, the effect is often that edging further away knocks a little more of the stuffing out of their opponents. It can be a slow death if you lose your discipline against this Saints side.
The final say went to Coote, whose sixth try of the season and 32nd of his Saints career was laid on by a quite stunning offload from Dodd. The youngster had also found time to notch his first Super League 40/20 before capping another promising display with a great bit of vision, finding Coote when the defence looked to have averted the danger. It was a similar heads up play to the one which allowed Welsby to complete his hat-trick at Hull on Monday (August 2). Added to the variety in his kicking game it is clear already that Dodd offers the attack a new dimension. What is worrying is that Woolf talked after the game about improving his game management. It is to be hoped that this does not mean coaching the imagination out of his game.
So with the phoney war won Saints can look forward to a Challenge Cup final rematch with a seemingly improving Castleford Tigers this Thursday (August 12). Get that one out of the way and we’ll only need to complete three more to reach the threshold of 18 required to qualify for the playoffs. Trips to Wigan and Warrington await to end August, with a rather gentler home assignment against winless Leigh sandwiched in between. A season that has largely felt chaotic and directionless may just be about to get serious.
Just don’t expect the coaches to worry too much about the destination of the League Leaders Shield.