By Mike Critchley

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 off their defensive line quickly, admittedly aided by a shortish looking ten 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, Saints also allowed themselves to be goaded into to 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 against 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', this was one to forget for the travelling army.

The opening quarter set the tone, with bodies flying in everywhere and tackles creeping above the shou-lder from both sides.

Two Andy Farrell penalties and one from Long were the only scores and then Danny Sculthorpe decided to regain some of the bragging rights from his brother.

Two smart Sculthorpe offloads yielded as many tries in as many minutes.

The first saw Adrian Lam go in, the second was polished off by Martin Aspinwall after good work from Brett Dallas.

Wigan's tails were up and from that point on Saints had a mountain to climb.

They did not help themselves on occasions - and when Ade Gardner attempted to clear his line perilously close to the touchline the Wigan defence took it as an open invitation to bundle him into touch.

From the next play their attack mercilessly turned the screw with Lam turning the ball back inside for Kris Radlinski to come onto the ball diagonally at pace to scorch over.

Starved of ball and enduring a number of repeat sets, Saints tackled well in the 20 minutes after the restart, limiting Wigan to two points from the boot of Farrell.

But then a Gardner fumble from a Lam grubber gifted Radlinski his second try to leave the score at a hopeless 26-2.

Saints rallied with two late tries to give the score a more respectable look.

The first saw Martin Gleeson round off good work from Paul Sculthorpe and Long.

Pressure

The second saw a speculative kick from Ricky Bibey chased up by Chris Joynt, with the pressure applied by the former skipper being enough to present Sculthorpe with a touchdown.

Danny Tickle's second penalty of the night rounded off the scoring as Warriors continue their league domination over the Saints stretching back to April 2002.