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| Round 18 Results |
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| Hull KR 35 Huddersfield 28 |
| Leeds 42 Castleford 24 |
| Widnes 32 Wigan 33 |
| London 10 Warrington 82 |
| Catalans 30 Hull FC 4 |
| St. Helens 30 Bradford 18 |
| Salford 10 Wakefield 46 |
| Leeds 38 Widnes 28 |
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| Round 19 Fixtures |
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| Friday 21st June - 8pm (TV) |
| Castleford v Hull FC |
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| Friday 21st June - 8pm |
| Salford v St. Helens |
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| Saturday 22nd June - 5pm |
| Catalans v Hull KR |
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| Sunday 23rd June - 3pm |
| Bradford v Widnes |
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| Sunday 23rd June - 3pm |
| Huddersfield v Leeds |
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| Sunday 23rd June - 3.30pm |
| Wakefield v London |
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| Monday 24th June - 7.45pm (TV) |
| Warrington v Wigan |
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| Day of the Match - H Widnes |
Well that was a bit more like it! After the debacle of last week’s Challenge Cup ‘success’ against Widnes, Saints had obviously been stung by the criticism of the coach in midweek and came out and destroyed the opponents by scoring eleven tries without really ever having to get out of first gear. So bad were Widnes that they managed one solitary set on our line and there must have been a point in the game when they feared conceding eighty points or more. It all makes last week’s seven try collapse at the Stobart all the more mystifying because the Vikings truly are an awful side.
Having some temporary work in an idyllic council estate in Wythenshawe, I was expecting to have a late arrival and trot in at 7.30pm to watch the Lancashire Hotpots on stage. However a traditional Friday afternoon down tools from the workmen led to us all bunking off early so there was time for a swift couple of pints in the Raven, an acid and reflux pie and the Hotpots were sodded off because I’ve seen them ten times before anyway.
The Widnes fans have clearly given up on their team with about 1,500 people supporting their club at home in last week’s Challenge Cup tie and no more than 4-500 turning up for a local derby at Langtree Park, which is a pretty shocking state of affairs. Despite Saints playing some utter crap over the last three games, and indeed for most of the season, over 14,000 were present to see it and Saints are not far behind Wigan at the top of the average attendances league for this season, lying ahead of Leeds. The days are now long since gone when people’s only way of getting us was to have a dig at our crowds and the stadium. Mind you, the latter still gets some stick in the way of “nice stadium, it will be even better when it’s finished” as one Widnes fan was overheard to say, but I’ve given up on that now. It was though quite strange to note that although there wasn’t a breath of wind outside it was still blowing a freezing breeze at the top of the North Stand. Not that one hardy soul I noticed heading to the ground would have cared, as on a night when the temperature dipped to about 2 degrees, he tipped in wearing a Saints shirt, no coat, three quarter length trousers, no socks and flip-flops. This has got to stop. Even Geordie Saint wears a coat these days. The guy didn’t get as much attention though as Everton midfielder, Tim Cahill, walking into the ground surrounded by luminous vested stewards as if he played for a big club or something.
Toothless likes a little flutter on the first try scorer and indeed he was £60 to the good as Sia Soliola does what he does, i.e. only score if he’s allowed to get our first try, and the floodgates were about to open in a functional and methodical kind of way. Whether Saints simply didn’t need to throw the ball about to score or not, they ploughed it up the middle relentlessly in a manner more similar to the Hull FC home game than the Leeds one, but it was always going to reap dividends against a side that simply cannot defend on its own line. Paul Wellens increased the score further and then there was a quick fire double from Anthony Laffranchi, or Boof as he is affectionately known, or at least that’s what Wikipedia told me after all these man of the match votes for the mysteriously named ‘Boof’ had confused me. I wish we’d cut out that “Laffranchi, he comes from Italy” song too. Not because there is anything wrong with it, just because it keeps reminding me of that clown at City who has cost us the league title.
Adam Swift went in for his first try following a proper Rugby League move to send us in at the break 26-0 up and it was always going to be a case of how many. For once we didn’t put the cue on the rack after fifty minutes and really went for it as we looked like scoring on every attack. And the best bit is Billy Bates actually saw each try. The reason for this statement is that our ten pounds lighter friend (only because he had tipped all the Jelly Babies out of his pocket), the man who once could see so well at a night match at The Boulevard in 1993 that I tried his glasses on, realised I needed them myself and never looked back, confessed that he hadn’t worn his glasses at a match for ten years because he couldn’t see much after he took them off again, and wearing glasses all the time would spoil his good looks. All that time I thought he was wearing contacts and just talking bollocks, it appears that he was suffering from an acute case of vanity. So I gently convinced him that he was being a pillock and all of a sudden we were watching the same game again after a very long decade.
The procession continued as the Spreadsheet Buster plucked a kick from the air for a try and Andrew Dixon was in after a ridiculously easy hand off on the returning Joe Mellor. Bill insisted it was the best hand off he had ever seen but as the post 2002 era was a sea of blurred blibs and blobs for him then this comment should be taken with a pinch of salt. Michael Shenton, much better tonight, finished off a move in the corner and Mark Flanagan notched his first in the red vee. Francis Meli looked like he might charge all the way for an interception try only for him to be caught from 20 metres in front over a period of 21 metres. Slow is not the word. Luckily the defence wasn’t in line and Adam Swift popped up on the inside to support the next play and score. Young Swifty was in for his hat-trick shortly and become only the third player to score a hat-trick on his home debut, following Anthony Sullivan in 1991 and the long since forgotten Dave McConnell in 2001. Bill insisted it had never happened before despite it being his own Talking Rugby column that highlighted the Sullivan fact back in the era. The scoring was complete then at 62-0 and I’m not even sure we broke sweat. Widnes did have one tackle on our line when they looked certain scorers only for the lads to re-group and force a superb tackle under the sticks. After last week’s 38, the boys were hungry for a nil and they got it.
With Sky not having added fifteen minutes on to the night, it was back to the packed Pied Bull for 10.15pm and lo and behold who should trot in but three of the Saints lads for a couple of orange cordials, bedecked in all the gear and loving the attention from a group of seriously pissed up middle aged women. In fact they loved it so much that they were seen moving back to their car half an hour later at a faster pace than the three men in question have moved all season.
Saints are back in business then, although they couldn’t really have failed to be tonight, and with home games against Oldham (in the Challenge Cup) and Wakefield to come then you would expect nothing less than two extremely comfortable wins to take us into swift return fixtures with Leeds at Headingley and Wigan at the Etihad Stadium. That is when things will start to get rather interesting.
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| Next Match |
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Friday 21st June 2013, 8pm
at City of Salford Stadium
Super League
Round 19
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| Salford | v | St. Helens |
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| SLXVIII Table |
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| rank | | points |
| 1 | Wigan | 18.31.+422 |
| 2 | Huddersfield | 18.26.+194 |
| 3 | Warrington | 18.25.+295 |
| 4 | Leeds | 17.23.+147 |
| 5 | Catalans | 18.22.+73 |
| 6 | Hull FC | 18.20.+45 |
| 7 | Hull KR | 18.18.-68 |
| 8 | St. Helens | 18.17.+15 |
| 9 | Bradford | 18.16.-32 |
| 10 | Wakefield | 17.13.-49 |
| 11 | Widnes | 18.12.-128 |
| 12 | Castleford | 18.10.-179 |
| 13 | London | 18.8.-349 |
| 14 | Salford | 18.7.-376 |
(updated 17/6/13)
Click here for full table....
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| 2013 Stats |
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| Player | | App/Sub/Tries |
| 1 | Wellens | 14/0/2 |
| 2 | Gardner | 10/0/5 |
| 3 | Turner | 19/0/8 |
| 4 | Soliola | 16/2/3 |
| 5 | Meli | 14/0/8 |
| 6 | Hohaia | 8/3/3 |
| 7 | Lomax | 8/0/7 |
| 8 | Perry | 6/0/2 |
| 9 | Roby | 7/1/1 |
| 10 | Scarsbrook | 12/7/3 |
| 11 | Puletua | 10/4/2 |
| 12 | Wilkin | 17/0/2 |
| 13 | Manu | 13/1/2 |
| 14 | Laffranchi | 12/4/5 |
| 15 | Flanagan | 5/5/2 |
| 16 | Clough | 2/11/1 |
| 17 | Wheeler | 2/0/0 |
| 18 | Magennis | 0/0/0 |
| 19 | Jones | 17/2/3 |
| 20 | Gaskell | 3/0/1 |
| 21 | Makinson | 14/0/6 |
| 22 | Forster | 0/0/0 |
| 23 | Ashe | 5/0/0 |
| 24 | Greenwood | 1/9/2 |
| 25 | Walmsley | 1/14/3 |
| 26 | Swift | 4/0/3 |
| 27 | Walker | 3/2/0 |
| 28 | Hand | 0/2/0 |
| 29 | Yates | 0/0/0 |
| 30 | Percival | 10/1/3 |
| 31 | Speakman | 0/1/0 |
| 32 | Tilley | 0/2/0 |
| 33 | Thompson | 2/3/2 |
| 35 | Charnock | 1/1/0 |
| 36 | Howarth | 9/1/0 |
| 37 | O'Brien | 2/0/0 |
(updated 9/6/13)
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| Saints Career Stats |
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| Player | | App/Sub/Tries |
| 1 | Wellens | 424/25/215 |
| 2 | Gardner | 271/15/173 |
| 3 | Turner | 19/0/8 |
| 4 | Soliola | 72/8/19 |
| 5 | Meli | 211/2/137 |
| 6 | Hohaia | 37/5/10 |
| 7 | Lomax | 88/2/43 |
| 8 | Perry | 35/9/2 |
| 9 | Roby | 142/132/73 |
| 10 | Scarsbrook | 37/43/16 |
| 11 | Puletua | 106/20/40 |
| 12 | Wilkin | 239/34/80 |
| 13 | Manu | 13/1/2 |
| 14 | Laffranchi | 41/4/13 |
| 15 | Flanagan | 13/23/5 |
| 16 | Clough | 59/125/24 |
| 17 | Wheeler | 41/11/19 |
| 18 | Magennis | 10/23/4 |
| 19 | Jones | 37/2/15 |
| 20 | Gaskell | 33/10/14 |
| 21 | Makinson | 55/6/31 |
| 22 | Forster | 0/4/0 |
| 23 | Ashe | 8/4/1 |
| 24 | Greenwood | 1/12/2 |
| 25 | Walmsley | 1/14/3 |
| 26 | Swift | 8/0/8 |
| 27 | Walker | 3/2/0 |
| 28 | Hand | 0/2/0 |
| 29 | Yates | 0/0/0 |
| 30 | Percival | 10/1/3 |
| 31 | Speakman | 0/1/0 |
| 32 | Tilley | 0/2/0 |
| 33 | Thompson | 2/3/2 |
| 35 | Charnock | 1/1/0 |
| 36 | Howarth | 9/1/0 |
| 37 | O'Brien | 2/0/0 |
(updated 9/6/13)
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