Paul Wellens revealed why St Helens dropped Lewis Dodd

Wigan Warriors got one back on rivals St Helens last night to win the 93rd derby in the summer era, however, the pre-game and the fallout has been focused on one man and why he didn’t play – Lewis Dodd.

It had been outlined before the clash that each side would have a host of injuries but they also both had bans to overcome. Strangely, each side lost their hooker to the Match Review Panel this week with Brad O’Neill and Moses Mbye both landing Grade B charges and one-game bans.

St Helens appealed the decision twice and lost twice, painting a bleak picture to what their dummy-half situation would look like. As it happened, pre-season signing Daryl Clark passed fit for the game and put in a mammoth effort to play the full 80 minutes but the rest of Saints’ spine was an unexpected combination.

Jack Welsby moved into the halves, as he has done at times this season due to injury, but last night he made the switch in favour of Lewis Dodd who Paul Wellens confirmed had been dropped. Dodd is set to leave for the NRL at the end of the season but Wellens’ bold call to drop him and hand a debut to 18-year-old Harry Robertson at full-back was one that raised eyebrows.

Incredibly, it’s one that almost paid off with Robertson setting up Welsby for the opening try and the Red Vee only losing 16-12 in what was an incredibly hard-fought game. However, the questions of why Lewis Dodd was dropped and how the Saints would have fared with him have now been asked.

QUIZ: Match these 10 Rugby League photos to the correct year (extra difficult)

Should Lewis Dodd have been dropped by St Helens or not?

The answer to if and why Lewis Dodd was dropped was actually answered pre-game with Paul Wellens speaking to Sky Sports about his team selection. Reports had emerged from fans that the young half had been engaged in verbals with fans after their shock loss to Castleford Tigers last week, but Wellens put the axing down to asking the 22-year-old to “fix up areas of his game”.

Speaking to Sky Sports, Wellens explained: “Lewis is a wonderful player and he’s a player that I and everybody at the club care about. There are just a couple of areas of his game that we feel like he needs to improve on.

“Let me make this clear, Lewis isn’t not in the team because he’s leaving at the end of the season. If he fixes up all the areas of his game that we want him to, I believe he could be a premier half-back on whichever side of the world he plays on.”

That wasn’t an answer that satisfied all fans with some still wanting to point the finger at Paul Wellens and blame that decision for the defeat, those fans choosing to ignore the huge list of unavailable players that included numerous international stars.

One posted on X: “Can’t help but think if Dodd played tonight we would have won that.”

Can’t help but think if Dodd played tonight we would have won that

— ash (@ash18282378) July 12, 2024

When the squads were announced, another posted: “I’ll put it out there now, not happy he’s dropped Dodd, fans only don’t like him cos of the way he’s being coached.”

Meanwhile, another X user was clearly very happy that Lewis Dodd had been dropped as they claimed that the selected spine of Robertson, Welsby, Lomax and Clark should remain in place for the final 10 games of the season.

That spine of 1,6,7 and 9 need to be kept in place now for me, rather we let that bed in this season than play Dodd

Much better, and we might aswell use that seeing as Sky have already awarded Wigan the lot this season 😂

— Liam (@liam_hefc) July 12, 2024