5 conclusions from St Helens’ dramatic Golden Point win against Salford Red Devils

St Helens picked up a crucial victory at home against Salford Red Devils on Thursday night, coming out on top as 17-16 winners in an evenly-fought contest which required Golden Point extra time to separate the two sides.

As a result, Paul Wellens’ side have leapfrogged their opponents in the play-off spots, moving up to 4th with Salford dropping down to 5th on points difference.

Here are our five key conclusions from the opening clash in Round 21…

Moses Mbye superb

With plenty of players missing for Saints, and others picking up knocks during the game (which we’ll get onto), the responsibility of kicking the drop goal to win it fell on Mbye. He did just that, and will rightly get the plaudits for doing so, but we thought the Australian playmaker was superb throughout.

If we weren’t highlighting him for the one-pointer, we’d already have been doing so for his try-saver on Deon Cross five minutes before the end of normal time.

Cross was the odds-on favourite to score when he got the ball in his hands, but Mbye scrambled across and was having none of it – preventing the Red Devils winger from stepping inside him and then hauling him into touch. A HUGE moment.

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Harry Robertson steps up

Mbye will celebrate his 31st birthday next week, so we *think* we can class him as a veteran. Anyhow, the polar opposite is team-mate Robertson, still only 18.

The young full-back hasn’t let Saints down since being thrown in at the deep end last month, and shone again on Thursday night, scooping Sky Sports’ Player of the Match medal as a result.

Amid the uncountable number of things he did well, one moment stands out above the rest. In Golden Point, he took a kick from Marc Sneyd near the touchline and must have made at least 15 metres with the ball in hand to fire the hosts down the field on play 1. By the end of that set, Mbye had kicked the winning one-pointer. Incredible.

Magic Marc Sneyd

He ended up on the losing side, but we’ll continue banging the drum on Sneyd. He is simply ridiculous, and it’s his boot which is his main asset, but the half-back’s rugby league IQ is insane.

Sneyd consistently works his way into the right areas before he puts his laces through the ball, and tests full-backs with every kick – which is why Robertson making it look as effortless as he did on the night deserves so much praise.

Salford grabbed 16 points, and Sneyd’s name is against eight of them – kicking two penalties in the first half and then two conversions in the second. But he was also responsible for the grubber kick which teed up Chris Hankinson’s second half try. How Saints would love someone like him in their team…

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Bonkers ill-discipline

Both sides saw two players apiece sin-binned during the Round 21 clash, and every single yellow was avoidable.

Salford first saw Joe Shorrocks sent for 10 in the bin 20 minutes in as he unnecessarily pulled back the shirt of Daryl Clark with the hosts on the charge to stop the hooker getting to the ball.

Morgan Knowles’ yellow came from a swinging arm on Joe Mellor, who was going nowhere, and with Saints looking to have the defensive set wrapped up. And from that followed an absolute ‘toys thrown out of the pram’ moment from both sides following an off-the-ball collision between Saints’ Joe Batchelor and Salford’s Loghan Lewis, who was left on the floor.

Batchelor didn’t need to touch the Red Devils man, so saw yellow, but so did Ollie Partington who flew in and started a melee after it. Incredibly unnecessary on all fronts.

Injury concerns aplenty for Wellens

As we briefly noted above, Saints started the night with plenty of their squad sidelined through injury, and they may have ended it with an ever bigger absentee list.

Agnatius Paasi was forced off early on and wasn’t able to return, while half-back Lewis Dodd left the field quite early on in the second half with a problem relating to his left arm that the club doctor said was troubling him at half-time.

Hooker Clark also required a HIA after appearing to be knocked unconscious, or at the very least pick up a serious head knock, in trying to score a try late on in ‘normal time’. The #9 played no part in Golden Point.

The status on all three of those is unknown, with the only injury during the game that was actually clarified being that of Lewis for Salford. He threw up on the field after a big hit from James Bell, and was forced off, but managed to return about 15 minutes later.

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