A WRITTEN-OFF Warrington Wolves side making the short trip to a St Helens side that looks pretty much unstoppable.
Sound familiar? That’s probably because it’s becoming close to the norm.
Indeed, despite their pretty favourable record at the Totally Wicked Stadium – they have won eight of 12 games against their neighbours there – you would have to go back a while to find a game where they travelled to Saints as anything other than underdogs.
And yet, recent history is littered with instances of against-the-odds Warrington victories against those at the other end of the 329 bus route.
Some of The Wire’s most memorable Super League nights have come at the new-ish home of the Saints – the semi-final wins of 2012 and 2018 are chief among them, even last year when they repelled a heavily fancied home side.
And of course, there was THAT day at Wembley in 2019. Yes it was a different competition but the sentiment is still the same – there is something about facing Saints that brings another level out of this group of Wire players.
That is why many of the noises coming out of St Helens will be cautionary, even if those coming from many among the primrose and blue faithful are of resignation.
After watching their side being comfortably second-best against a depleted Catalans side last time out, the nightmares of Alex Walmsley and co smashing through the Wire middle will have started pretty early.
They are yet to fully convince in the early days of Daryl Powell’s reign while Saints have been their machine-like selves, serenely building a perfect record.
Few outside Wire’s inner circle expect anything other than a home victory on Friday. History may well be on the Warrington side, but not much else appears to be.
However, we have seen plenty of evidence of what the spirit of the underdog can do if harnessed properly.
Wolves have used it themselves on several occasions and have had it used upon them aplenty too – the last evidence of that appeared only last week.
That combined with what will surely have to be their best performance of the year to date by some distance could well lead them to scenes of celebration again.
No added motivation should be needed for this Wire side for a game against one of their bitter rivals, but the prospect of proving a lot of people wrong and putting a dent in the air of invincibility around Saints in the process is no doubt an enticing one.
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