HOLDERS St Helens will be hoping for more home comforts when the draw is made for the quarter-finals of the Carnegie Challenge Cup tonight.
It is more than three years since Saints were last handed an away tie and a 10th successive home draw should keep them on course to complete a hat-trick of Cup final triumphs.
The club changed the name of their famous old Knowsley Road ground in the run-up to Saturday’s fifth-round tie to The GPW Recruitment Stadium but it did not bring a change of luck for visitors Warrington, who played their part in a thriller before going down 40-34 and have now gone 23 games without a win against their neighbours.
Saints rode their luck to become the first team through to the last eight, in which a home tie is all-important before the neutrality of the semi-finals and final.
“You are starting to see most teams win their home games in Super League,” said Saints’ Great Britain stand-off Leon Pryce. “It’s a bit like football. A lot of teams are strong at home.
“It doesn’t really matter what team we get but a home tie would be nice.”
Pryce admitted the holders were mightily relieved to see off Warrington, who endured nothing but misfortune from the moment centre Martin Gleeson was forced to pull out of the side during the warm-up. The Great Britain international was taken ill overnight with a virus and was on a drip when the rest of his team-mates arrived at the ground.
He took part in the warm-up before being forced to concede defeat and the Wolves’ woes did not stop there.
Paul Johnson, who took Gleeson’s centre spot, created two tries for winger Chris Hicks before being forced off with knee ligament damage with his side leading 24-22.
Even worse hit was full-back Stuart Reardon, whose season was almost certainly ended with a ruptured Achilles tendon sustained in innocuous fashion after only six minutes.
Chris Riley, who was initially selected as 18th man, was quickly pressed into service as a makeshift full-back but was forced off in the second half with ankle ligament damage.
Saints took full advantage of their opponents’ adversity, coming behind for a third time – just as they had done in a Super League match a fortnight earlier – to claim the spoils.
Three tries in a six-minute spell took the holders into a 40-24 lead but still brave Warrington battled back to set up a nerve-jangling finish with two further tries in the last three minutes.
“It was a massive relief to get through,” admitted Pryce. “It was obviously good for the fans and the television viewers but not so good for the heart or the lungs out there.
“Sometimes we make games hard for ourselves but I think you’ve got to give a lot of credit to Warrington for showing a lot of character because they came back and pushed us right to the end.
“They controlled the ruck and from there it’s a very tough game if you’re constantly turned on your back and have slow play-the-balls.”
Centre Willie Talau scored two of Saints’ seven tries but Warrington had the consolation of providing an early favourite for try of the season from speed merchant Kevin Penny.
Quick thinking by scrum-half Michael Monaghan, who had gathered Sean Long’s grubber kick near his own posts, sparked a breath-taking length-of-the-field move which will live long in the memory of the 8,570 crowd and thousands more television viewers.
Hicks ran behind his own line to find space and unleashed the electric Penny, who easily stepped past Long and held off the cover on a glorious 80-metre sprint.
The 20-year-old blotted his copybook by gifting Saints a try shortly afterwards but overall enhanced his World Cup prospects in front of the spectating England coach Tony Smith and certainly impressed St Helens coach Daniel Anderson.
“It was one of the best tries I’ve ever seen,” said Anderson. “I’d have him in my team.
“Young players do make errors and, when he’s played 50 or 100 games, I think you’re going to see a polished product.
“At the moment he’s still a bit of a rough diamond but no player in the comp can match him for pace and he scores tries against us regularly.”
