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Sport possesses the most magnificent ability to remove ourselves from all our worries and problems like nothing else and we have never been more grateful for that than this year. But not even the most creative of screenwriters could have rebuilt this finale into a Super League season that didn’t even look like it would end in a stage.
This was, to put it bluntly, the Aguero moment of rugby league. Only in 2020, the wildest and most unpredictable year, could a Grand Final have been decided that way. That won’t be of any consolation to the Wigan Warriors, of course, who will likely remain in shock for the next few days as they try to understand how the Super League title slipped from their fingertips.
Perhaps it’s cruel that Bevan French, Wigan’s best player all season, was the man who paused for a split second and allowed Jack Welsby to land to score the winning try after the full-time horn sounded, seconds after the fall of Tommy Makinson. goal hit the posts.
But a sports drama like this doesn’t care about compassion or fairytale endings.
“To chase things and compete with every play, these are things we talk about all the time, playing until the last minute,” revealed victorious St Helens coach Kristian Woolf. “But do that and get a result like this… outstanding. I don’t know if you’ll see a better soccer game than that. “
For 65 minutes, you felt like the moment would come that finally secured back-to-back Super League titles for St Helens. Neither of the rugby league’s two great rivals was willing to give an inch in what had already become one of the great finals before chaos began to unfold in the final moments.
In a season in which the very existence of the rugby league has been at stake, perhaps it was always the good margins that determined the champions of a year that no one will ever forget. It looked like Jake Bibby’s attempt, the first of the final when he got into the corner with 15 minutes to go, was going to be that moment.
How silly to think that was going to be the case, and that this St Helens team, the first team to defend the title in nearly a decade, would fade away. Having scored the only first-half points from the tee, the only time in history the Grand Final has been without attempts at halftime, Lachlan Coote was available nine minutes later to level the game at 4-4.
But the drama was just beginning. The frenzied final minutes saw St Helens cut off a wide drop attempt, before Zak Hardaker, who previously hit the post when trying to convert Bibby’s try, came up short with a penalty attempt that, in all likelihood, would have secured the title for Wigan. It was, on this night of thin margins, barely wide.
Before all that, and before the madness of the final seconds, both sides had played their part in a Grand Final that you simply couldn’t take your eyes off.
There was drama, tension, physicality and just an act of scoring, as Coote’s penalty made it 2-0 at halftime after a Warriors error.
During almost half an hour of passionate and relentless rugby after halftime, it seemed like that might be enough. But when Bibby scored, St Helens needed something more. Something the Warriors, whose defensive line never seemed like it would break all night, couldn’t handle. However, how it happened defies belief.
“It was surreal,” reflected Wigan coach Adrian Lam, crestfallen. “Even now, I want to rewind it… it’s so weird. We are heartbroken. We are devastated. “
Makinson’s drop when the horn sounded bounced off the post. The Frenchman, so often cool and collected, seemed certain he would take the ball and send us into extra time, but he blinked at the most crucial moment.
The ball bounced away from him, and teenage center Welsby reacted faster. There wasn’t even time to convert. But it didn’t matter.
And as the celebrations began and the chaos began to subside, so did the fact that all of that meant victory in the final game of James Graham’s career, but also defeat for the final of Sean O’Loughlin.
Yet the St Helens players, minutes after winning the title, still found time to form an honor guard for O’Loughlin when he left the field for the last time. Sport, huh? The sanctuary of salvation for many of us during this turbulent year. Hopefully in an ever-changing world, that’s something that never changes.
Wigan French; Bibby, Hardaker, Gildart, Burgess; Leuluai, Hastings; Bullock, Powell, Singleton, Isa, Farrell, Partington. Exchange Clubb, Greenwood, O’Loughlin, Smithies.Try Bibby
St helens Coote; Makinson, Naiqama, Welsby, Grace; Lomax, Fages; Walmsley, Roby, Graham, Taia, Bentley, Knowles. Exchange Peyroux, McCarthy-Scarsbrook, Lees, Love. Try Welsby Goals Coote 2
Referee C Kendall.
