Report: St Helens 38-12 Warrington

It was a sour evening at the Totally Wicked Stadium as Warrington's five-match winning streak and tenure at the top of Super League was brought to an abrupt end with a resounding defeat to St Helens. The Wire were comfortably beaten in every department by Saints, who took advantage of an awful display from Steve Price's team. 


Our lineup was exactly as I'd hoped for in my Sweet 17 piece previewing the game. Joe Philbin started once again at loose forward, while the back line and halfbacks remained the same, with Mike Cooper and Jack Hughes being restored to the team after having a rest last week. On the bench, Matt Davis kept his place after a promising debut against London, meaning that Harvey Livett and Danny Walker missed out on being in the squad.

More than 3500 Wire fans descended on St Helens and got the away end rocking pre-match, with some especially loud renditions of the songs, particularly the one dedicated to Blake Austin. Warrington started the game well but we were behind after 11 minutes when a penalty was conceded in front of the sticks and Lachlan Coote elected to go for two points. Saints had a 2-0 lead but it didn't last long. We scored a bizarre try when Daryl Clark found himself the beneficiary of a Chris Hill offload and almost scored, but had the ball ripped from his grasp by Jonny Lomax, which allowed Austin to pounce on the free ball and score an easy try confirmed by the video referee, which was converted by Stefan Ratchford, giving us a 2-6 lead after 13 minutes. Unfortunately, this was as good as it got.

The lead lasted just five minutes. The inspirational Coote played a ball wide to Zeb Taia, and Mark Percival was allowed to ghost through two attempted tackles from Ratchford and Hughes before scoring in front of the away end. Percival's try was converted by Coote and this looked like it would be the last scoring action of the half, with the scores remaining 8-6 to Saints right until the latter stages of the half. A crucial moment saw Mike Cooper sin-binned for an out-of-control tackle on Danny Richardson. Our defence crumbled without Cooper and in the ten minutes without him - the final ten of the half - we conceded twelve points. First, the ever likeable Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook powered over to score, somehow getting past four Wire players, before proceeding to celebrate his try right in front of us, the horrid little runt. Always despised him. 

Unfortunately, our following chants regarding his increasing weight appeared to spur him on. LMS looked to be over for a second but Ben Currie made an absolutely unbelievable try-saving tackle, though it only postponed the agony. An utterly ridiculous try was conceded when Lomax found his way through to the line, again beating a number of Wire defenders. Two conversions from Coote meant the score was 20-6 at half-time, 12 points worse than when Cooper left the field. A shocking 40 minutes could only be improved upon, right?

Unfortunately not. Five minutes into the second half, Daryl Clark got us briefly back in the game with a nice try from dummy half, which Ratchford converted. This brought the deficit down to eight points, though any thoughts of a comeback were promptly extinguished just four minutes later when we conceded one of the daftest tries I have ever seen. Ratchford made an absolute mess of a high kick from Coote - a moment which summed up a horrendous night for the full back - and Matty Lees came over to score an easy try, which Coote converted. Charnley had a try controversially disallowed when Toby King was adjudged to have been offside, while Atkins was held up on the line moments later.

It got worse when a ball out wide to Regan Grace sent the winger on his way. King and Jack Hughes both failed to tackle Grace, and he beat the suffering Ratchford in a one-on-one, to score a brilliant solo try. In an attempt to prevent the try, Tom Lineham went in on Grace, which meant that he was on report and is likely to receive a ban for the next game. James Child awarded Saints a penalty try, giving Coote two stabs at goal, and he took them both, making it 34-12. The final scoring action of the night came with 17 minutes left. A passage of quick St Helens play cut through our lacklustre defence, before Kevin Naiqama walked past Declan Patton and set up Tommy Makinson to score and round off a horrific evening for the Wire.

So there's a report which doesn't really do justice to how poor the Warrington performance was. The display was absolutely riddled with errors and poor passing, as well as an appalling array of decision-making. The speed of St Helens' play was something which we simply couldn't live with and our forwards couldn't get into the game, with Luke Thompson, James Roby and Alex Walmsley dominating them. Ratchford had a rare stinker, as did King and Hughes, while Lineham and Charnley were never in the game. Aside from scoring the first try, Austin did very little and appeared frustrated in the second half, while Patton had a poor night. A key factor tonight was the lack of impact from the bench - we didn't get anywhere near enough from Jason Clark or Ben Murdoch-Masila - who looks to have picked up an injury - while we never get enough from Lama Tasi. The only players who can take much credit from that performance are Daryl Clark, Ben Currie, Joe Philbin and Matt Davis, who was good when he came on. The only real positive was the following from both teams - 3500 Wire fans making the trip to be part of a 17,000 crowd - phenomenal numbers.

That was a wake-up call and a reality check. We are going to have to be much better if we've a chance of winning the major silverware this season. We can't have individual performances as poor as that in games as big as that. Fortunately for us, the nature of the system means that games in April aren't all that important - it's what you do in October that counts. We've got six months to work together as a group and improve on elements of our player. I'm sure that the next time we play Saints, in late June, we will be greatly improved. Until then, let's take each game as it comes. Next up is Salford Red Devils at the Halliwell Jones on Good Friday. Have a read of my rankings from the Saints debacle and then check back this week for my build up to the Salford game, where we'll (hopefully) get this show back on the road. Just remember...

...It's always our year.

Daniel (@aloosewire)