St Helens head coach Paul Rowley has called into question a crucial decision in his side’s Magic Weekend loss to Wigan Warriors, stating that it ‘troubled’ him.
Saints ultimately lost 16-14 but they had been leading 8-6 in the second half at a point when Rowley believes that his side should have had a penalty from in front of the sticks but the incident was instead placed on report, meaning they could not take the two.
Wigan then immediately went down the other end to score, taking a 12-8 lead whereas St Helens could have been leading 10-6 if the penalty had been awarded.
Speaking post-match in his presser to SaintsTV, Rowley said of that decision: “The on-report troubled me a little bit more because there’s a review, there are two jumbo screens at this ground, you couldn’t get any better, and there’s contact with the head. That (should be) two points all day long, as a result Wigan go the other end and score a six-pointer.
“We should be good enough to defend it but I think that the on-report is not the right way of going because it prevents the use of a green card, and if there’s a green card valid, then green card, and it prevents the penalty, obviously.”
He had also spoken about the fact his side won four captain’s challenges, something he rightly suggested meant the on-field referee was missing penalties or wrongly awarding them.
Rowley explained: “We won four captains’ challenges and that’s quite unique, I would suspect. Obviously, that means four things got missed in that respect, but we challenged and got them, and that’s great, that’s what a captains’ challenge is for.”
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St Helens boss reacts after ‘violent’ derby
In a game that was a bruising and bloody encounter, Rowley admitted that he struggled to keep up with the Red Vee even ending the game with 12 men thanks to a rarely used rule surrounding concussion interchanges.
“I couldn’t keep up at times,” the St Helens boss admitted.
“It was a violent game, and there were a lot of changes and head injuries, and God knows what else was going on, so, yeah, it was hard to keep up with the times.”
Alex Walmsley failed a HIA, George Delaney left the field for another with the result unconfirmed, whilst Daryl Clark picked up an ankle issue.
On that mayhem, Rowley said: “Al had a HIA that nobody picked up on, so it was one earlier which came back almost unnoticed, but then got noticed, so that along with a lot of the other HIAs, like I said before, it was hard to keep a check on things with the injuries.
“They soon knocked you out of sync and we had a couple of minutes there with the man down.”
He also labelled Jack Welsby’s second sin bin as ‘ridiculous’ with the St Helens full-back sent to the bin after pushing Brad O’Neill.
Rowley argued: “I thought the second one was ridiculous for Jack, so I’m not sure what he’s done there. The first one, we’re disappointed with that and Jack will be disappointed with it as well, but yes, the second one, no.”
