Wigan Warriors 30

St Helens 14

LOOKING purely at the 80 minutes of action on Friday night, this was a disappointing Saints display against a side that seemed better prepared and hungrier for the win.

Although boss Ian Millward was offering no excuses, Saints die-hards may offer plenty in mitigation for the side's first real defeat of the season - discounting the Easter Monday outing.

The previous Saturday's absorbing encounter against Bradford, the absence of two thirds of the regular front row in Keiron Cunningham and Keith Mason and the early departure of Lee Gilmour on a stretcher all contributed to a below par display.

And you can throw into the mix the other side of the equation - Wigan were not only hungry to avenge their Challenge Cup final defeat, but had also received a tongue lashing from chairman Maurice Lindsay after their poor display against Warrington the previous week.

Tactically Wigan's stand-in coach Denis Betts had done his homework with his players getting off their defensive line quickly, admittedly aided by a shortish looking 10 metres.

Saints made little headway up the middle, and as a consequence the much-trumpeted quick play-the-ball tactic, so successful this season, was nullified.

There was little direction from dummy half - and no disrespect to third choice hooker Jon Wilkin - but Saints will be mightily relieved to get Cunningham back on board and for that matter Micky Higham.

Without any sort of platform to work off, Sean Long spent a lot of time desperately running sideways and throwing optimistic long passes out wide.

Many a ball hit the deck in Saints' eagerness to break the deadlock. The patience in building pressure that has been a feature this year was absent.

Whether it was also part of the Wigan plan or stemmed simply from frustration, but Saints also allowed themselves to be goaded into trading rough stuff - which turned out to be meat and drink to Wigan's old warhorses in the front row.

They were also unusually ill-disciplined with even skipper Paul Sculthorpe being pinged twice for talking back, contributing to a 15-9 in the penalty count.

The only positive notes for Saints came in the welcome return of John Stankevitch to the ground where his shoulder injury nightmare began.

Although understandably ring-rusty in his first senior game for nine months, he tried hard and was almost rewarded with a try, which was ruled out for a knock-on in the build-up.

For the second week running Chris Joynt was easily Saints' best forward.

If he carries on wading through this amount of work each week there will be plenty of people getting in his ear about carrying on playing next term.

Although Saints fans' spirits in the packed north stand remained high with constant renditions of 'stand up if you've won the cup', generally this was one to forget for the travelling army.

Saints' tries were scored by Martin Gleeson and Paul Sculthorpe. Sean Long banged over three conversions.

Saints: Paul Wellens; Ady Gardner, Martin Gleeson, Willie Talau, Darren Albert; Jason Hooper, Sean Long; Nick Fozzard, Jon Wilkin, Mark Edmondson, Chris Joynt, Lee Gilmour, Paul Sculthorpe. Subs: Maurie Fa'asavalu, Ian Hardman, Rick Bibey, John Stankevitch.