St Helens’ fighting talk as Paul Wellens explains major change made before Castleford victory

Paul Wellens insists his St Helens side ‘owe Leigh Leopards one’ as they battle to secure a home play-off tie in Super League. The Saints all but made sure of their spot in the top six on Friday night as they beat Castleford Tigers 40-4 at the Totally Wicked Stadium.

Boosted by the returns of Tommy Makinson, Mark Percival, Lewis Dodd, Daryl Clark and James Bell, it turned into a night of celebration for the Merseyside outfit as they returned to their barnstorming best when they absolutely needed to. However, the home crowd were also given the chance to bid St Helens’ departing stars Makinson, Dodd and Sione Mata’utia farewell before the play-offs get underway.

Saints face Leigh in their final regular season match-up and they know a win over Adrian Lam’s side at the Leigh Sports Village would be enough to give them a home tie in the first round of the play-offs. It’s fair to say there’s recent history between the two teams, though, with the Leopards hammering St Helens 46-4 just seven weeks ago during a rough patch for Wellens and his team.

“Potentially we are playing for a home tie in the play-offs,” Wellens said per the St Helens Star. “This is the nature of the competition this year, one or two wins can propel you three or four spots.

“It was an important two points tonight and again next week we’ve got a great opportunity to go and play against the good side in their own backyard, in a hostile environment, which is what play-off football’s all about.

“We played them a few weeks ago and were on the wrong side of a drubbing really. You can say we owe them one, but we’re going there to compete and compete hard and again compete for two points and hopefully that will reflect in the ladder. I’d love us to get an opportunity to come back here once more this season.”

St Helens had a comfortable evening against the Tigers as they ran in eight tries to bounce back from their underwhelming loss at Warrington Wolves last time out in style. Jon Bennison scored a hat-trick on the night, while George Delaney, Tommy Makinson, Agnatius Paasi, Jonny Lomax and Jake Burns also touched down.

In truth, the pressure was on Wellens’ side leading into Friday’s game, but the head coach admitted he never felt anything but confident with a change of scenery in the week appearing to pay dividends.

“To be honest I was very confident all week. The group was in a really good spot,” he said. “We did a few things differently this week and trained away from our training base and out at Sale Sharks.

“They were very welcoming in terms of allowing us to use their training facility, which was fantastic just for us to get something a little bit different. The lads really responded to that. Sometimes a change of environment is good.

“There’s a great energy about the way that we trained and I was confident coming into the game tonight that we would see that out on the field as well.”

He added: “The way it panned allowed us to get Iggy and Belly out there in the middle together, and working in tandem as they do. It allowed us to get Daryl Clark the game time that we needed and obviously similar with Mark Percival and Jack Welsby again building on his 40 minutes from last week.

“Once the game was relatively comfortable in terms of the scoreboard, it did take the pressure off and allowed us then take Jack Welsby and Mark Percival off the field, and look after some of those blokes who were coming back, pretty much a week or two weeks ahead of schedule.”