A Saints Set of Six for another champion new year in 2023

Here is our New Year set of six.

1. New Year, new coach.

Well, Paul Wellens is hardly a newcomer – a local hero who has transitioned from cheering Mal Meninga from the terraces as a five-year-old fan to winning every team and individual honour in club rugby as a player. He has served his time as a coach, too, with his attributes in that department highly regarded across the game.

Being promoted to the head coach’s job for a champion team will bring its pressures – particularly for a hometown Saint. Hopefully, he will be given time to stamp his style and authority on this group of players.

With largely the same roster, all eyes will be on any tweaks that Wellens and assistant Laurent Frayssinous make to the Saints style, particularly with the ball, to try and keep ahead of the pack.

2. Brand new Doddy.

Wellens inherits largely the same roster that started last year, with Regan Grace and Kyle Amor being the key departures from the top 19 numbers.

However, when Lewis Dodd pulls on the number 7 jersey, allowing Jack Welsby to revert to full back and Jonny Lomax to his traditional number six role, it will feel like a new Saints spine.

It was the one that started last year so brightly until Dodd ruptured an Achilles on Good Friday, a year-ending absence compounded by injuries to Will Hopoate, Mark Percival and Grace.

Achilles can be a nasty injury, but touch wood Dodd has retained all the zip he possessed before. As much as Lomax pulled out all the stops last year, despite injury, having a player who combines attacking zest, organisational skills with a sublime short-kicking game will be a massive asset.

3. Jack Welsby.

As point two explains, injuries meant Welsby’s transition to Lachlan Coote’s full back berth did not go according to plan and he had a fair bit of switching around between 1 and 6 last term.

Last year – given the adversity the team was going through at times – saw Welsby have to take on a bit more responsibility. There was an evolution from just being the young lad to throw on to produce something special to one ready to organise and on occasion get in the trenches.

He was one of the Saints contingent who played on during the World Cup with England – an experience that will have taught the prodigious talent that rugby league has downs as well as the ups he has been used to at Saints.

And in a way that may be just help fire him up and make him hungrier going into the new year.

4. Mark Percival's value.

It is hard for some fans to believe, but Percy is going into his testimonial season – 10 years in the blink of an eye.

The signs are that the bone injury that kept him out for four months from last May, and was then re-injured in the Grand Final, has healed.

Injury is an occupational hazard with the way the strong-running Widnesian plays the game.

The purists don’t like it, but gone are the days when centres were simply there to create and take opportunities out wide and show off their Gidleyesque flick-pass.

Percy’s role – and Tommy Makinson for that matter - makes many an observer wince but it has been key to starting Saints’ momentum this past five years or so.

Their running of the ball from backfield on Play 1 and Pay 2 - has made the opposition’s job of stopping Alex Walmsley and Agnatius Paasi on Play 3 nigh on impossible.

Their willingness to run through a brick wall for the team shows no sign of waning. Saints missed Percival last summer – and when both he and Makinson were missing last July Saints were well below par at Wakefield and Salford. Case made.

5. James Roby's last waltz.

This will once and for all be Robes’ last year as a player. With it will end a run of having one of the best nines in the world that goes back to August 1994. Saints have been spoilt rotten when it comes to hookers – with the generations that preceded them also top notch, whether talking Bernard Dwyer, Paul Groves, Graham Liptrot or Tony Karalius and beyond.

Nobody is expecting a James Roby or Keiron Cunningham Mark II to emerge.

Whether the successor is here in the form of the Joey Lussick/Taylor Pemberton or whether someone will be bought in at the season end may depend on how that pair shape with the opportunies that may arise this year.

One thing is for sure, Roby will want concentrate on playing, going out on a high – and less about celebrating landmarks.

6. Wildcards.

Last year Jon Bennison became the star find when promoted to the top team and proved to be the silver lining in the dark injury cloud.

This year Saints have elevated a number of youngsters to the top squad and all will be allowed to find their feet and grow into the environment.

Anyone who is given a red vee shirt with a number on the back gets one for a reason – and without loading expectation upon them there are some pretty exciting prospects among them.

Plenty will be hoping Tee Ritson - the flying wing from Barrow - will be able to transfer what he has been doing in the Championship to the top flight.

It can often be harder for forwards to make that transition quickly from age grade rugby. Although James Graham showed thew way for Luke Thompson and Matty Lees on that score.

Even though the likes of Dan Norman, Jake Wingfield and Sam Royle will be keen to continue to press their claims, players of the cut of young guns Mackenzie Buckley and George Delaney show real promise and plenty are excited to see more of them.

You trust the coaching staff at Saints to manage that one in terms of workload and expectations.

Happy New Year!