The bookies had made the Catalans Dragons slight favourites ahead of tonight’s final eliminator against a Saints side looking for their fifth consecutive Old Trafford appearance and potentially a fifth consecutive Grand Final win.

The two sides last met in July at the Totally Wicked Stadium when the Dragons secured a 14-12 win with the season’s previous meeting at the Stade Gilbert Brutus at the beginning of May also witnessing a Dragons win, by 24-12 on that occasion.

Steve McNamara’s side have had a week off to prepare for their big game, and once which they will have been building towards for the last month, while Saints had a tough run out last weekend in the opening round of the playoffs when they beat Warrington Wolves by 16-8.

A place in the play off semi-finals awaited and a win for St Helens would see them travelling to Perpignan next week to take on the Catalans Dragons, while should the Warrington Wolves spring a surprise and get the win then they would be travelling to Wigan next week while last nights winners, Hull KR, would be getting on the plane to France.

St Helens have won all three encounters so far in 2023, by twenty-two points at home in April, and by four and then twelve in the meetings in July and a fortnight ago at the Halliwell-Jones.

Warrington had been given a twelve-point start on the handicap coupon after suffering a monumental fall in form following a stunning start to the season, and all but their most optimistic fans were expecting a Wolves defeat and Saints marching closer to another Grand Final.

Leeds Rhinos made their way across the Pennines looking for their fourth consecutive Women’s Super League Grand Final appearance as they looked to defend their title but they knew that they had a monumental challenge in their way as they took on a St Helens side who finished a place above them at the end of the regular season.

A Grand Final place against the York Valkyrie at the LNER Community Stadium on the 8th of October was up for grabs and the Rhinos were slight favourites after they won the round nine encounter three weeks ago by 34-22 while the sought further revenge for the defeat to Saints in the Challenge Cup Final.

Saints had never beaten the Rhinos at the Totally Wicked Stadium but were confident that today would be the day.

St Helens fans travelling to Warrington for tonight’s round 26 game would be keeping one eye on the score updates from the DW Stadium as they hoped that their side could thrash an out of form Wolves side who are in danger of dropping out of the play-offs, while Castleford Tigers sprung some kind of miracle against one of their rivals for the minor premiership.

A win for Saints would send their interest into the final round of the season and while defeat wouldn’t certainly mean that the Wolves would miss out on the last play-off spot, it would mean that it was increasingly unlikely that they would make the top six when the final reckoning was made at the end of round twenty-seven.

Saints were big favourites in the bookies eyes as they start to find their best form at the right end of the season.

With the league leader’s trophy looking like it was a step too far for Leigh Leopards in what has turned into an astounding season for them, tonight’s game against a St Helens side with their eyes on the top of the table, was a chance for the fourth placed side to move two points closer to securing a lofty play-off place.

Leigh won both games so far in 2023 against the World Champions, the league game at the LSV and the Challenge Cup semi-final which saw them make their victorious trip to Wembley Stadium on the 12th of August.

St Helens were favourites going into the game with a twelve-point handicap on the coupon as they looked to continue their improvement in form as the competition entered its final stages and they looked to peak just in time for the Old Trafford Grand Final.

The unpredictable nature of both Wakefield Trinity and St Helens throughout 2023 meant that today’s meeting at the Be Well Support Stadium was a bit of a lottery for those trying to make a prediction about the outcome.

A win by more than ten points for the home side would see them off the bottom of the table and above the Castleford Tigers in the scramble to avoid relegation, while a seventy-five-point win for Saints (not beyond the realms of possibility) would move the visitors into top spot in the league, quashing all thoughts of their very poor start to the season.

Saints were the bookies favourites with Wakefield given a sixteen-point start on the handicap coupon, but it would be a brave person who would write off a Trinity side still frantically scrambling to maintain their Super League status.

St Helens and Huddersfield Giants took advantage of not being involved in the Challenge Cup final to play their postponed round one fixture which wasn´t played to allow Saints to travel to Australia and become World Club Champions.

A win for St Helens by six or more points would lift them above yesterday’s Challenge Cup winners Leigh Leopards and into third spot, but a win for the Giants would benefit them more as if they could register a victory by twenty points or more, then they would move up to seventh spot and the fringes of the play off places, a win of any margin would see them into eighth.

Saints were the favourites with the bookies, and it was the Giants who were given an eight-point start on the coupon for the Sunday tea-time kick off.

In a repeat of last year’s Women’s Challenge Cup Final, Leeds Rhinos and St Helens met in the first time that the Final had been staged at Wembley Stadium, the Rhinos hoping to overcome the disappointment of an 18-8 loss fifteen months ago.

Saints are currently second in the Group 1 table with the Rhinos in third spot and when the sides last met at the end of May it was the Saints who were again winners by a 38-18 scoreline.

Saints were the favourites to record a third consecutive Final win and record their seventh victory, while the Rhinos are the second most successful side in the competition, looking for their third win and their first since 2019.

There was nothing to choose between these two sides in 2023, the aggregate over the two games played so far being 37-37 as Leeds Rhinos travelled to the Totally Wicked Stadium to take on St Helens.

It was a weakened Saints side who had been dominating the headlines during the week after the injuries that they picked up in losing their semi-final against the Leigh Leopards against a Rhinos side who needed the win to keep alive their hopes of a play-off place in seven rounds time.

Saints were slight favourites but there was every chance that this would be a classic between two sides who had been almost inseparable throughout the season.

All week, the talk had been whether the Leigh Leopards could make the first final of the season, and their first Challenge Cup final since they beat Leeds in the 1971 final, that being their first final since 1921, by beating the Super League Champions St Helens at the Halliwell-Jones.

Leigh won the only encounter of 2023 by 20-12 but that was back in round four when Saints were suffering a massive World Club Challenge hangover and the bookies made them slight favourites for the win and progress to the final as Leigh were given a six-point start on the handicap coupon.

Leigh brought a massive and vociferous support to Warrington, their fans full of hope and expectation that they would be the ones partying come the final whistle.

It was Leigh’s first semi-final since 1987 when they lost to St Helens by 14-8, the majority of the crowd hoping for a better outcome thirty-six years on.

Cup semi-final weekend got underway with the first game of two for St Helens as their women’s side had the toughest of challenges against a league leading York Valkyrie side who are unbeaten so far in 2023 after six rounds of the league tournament.

The weather was likely to be a leveller, or at lead an additional variable in an already complex game as York named the same side which drew with the Leeds Rhinos last weekend.

York had won the earlier game in 2023 by some margin but this was likely to be a much tougher encounter for them with Saints desperate for a Wembley appearance as they look to make it three consecutive tournament wins.

A wet Halliwell-Jones Stadium welcomed the two sides onto the field.

As St Helens climb the Super League table after a poor start to the season, the Warrington Wolves are tumbling in the opposite direction on the back of five losses in their least six outings, most recently against struggling sides from over the Pennines in the Castleford Tigers and Leeds Rhinos.

A place in the top three was up for grabs for the winners, Saints with a chance to jump ahead of the Wolves, the Wolves seeking to get closer to the Catalans Dragons ahead of their game tomorrow against Huddersfield.

Recent poor form from the hosts meant that the bookies had installed the visitors as favourites, handicapping their eight points on the coupon.

Just five days after the two sides met in the quarter finals of the Challenge Cup, Hull FC and St Helens were thrown together again by the vagaries of the fixture computer for a round sixteen Super League match with the Black & Whites looking for revenge and hoping to keep thirteen players on the field beyond half time.

The home side were obviously without the services of Griffin after he received a seven-game suspension for what he said to the referee after the half time hooter last weekend, but coach Tony Smith made several other changes to his side as they looked for a reversal.

Saints were without the services of injured Percival and Makinson who were replace by Hopoate and Bennison.

FC came into the game on the back of a sixteen-game losing streak against the Saints, their last win coming back in August 2017, and the bookies had the visitors down as favourites to take the points and lift themselves up into third spot, just two behind the joint league leaders.

Women’s Super League had a lunchtime kick off at the Totally Wicked Stadium where fourth placed Group One side St Helens had a repeat of Friday night´s men’s fixture as they took on a Wigan Warriors side in second place and chasing down an unbeaten York Valkyrie at the top of the table.

Saints lost their opening round match to the league leaders but then beat the Leeds Rhinos in the second-round while Wigan drew with Warrington in their opening match, beating the Huddersfield Giants by ten points in round two.

There was little to choose between the two sides for this local derby match and it looked like an even encounter on paper.

Show me a true rugby league supporter who says that they don’t love a Saints versus Wigan derby, and I’ll show you a liar.

Whether you’re a Warrior or a Saint and hoping that your side will win the most important bragging rights, or a neutral who just likes to see two of the best sides in the game batter one another for the two points.

Wigan won when the two sides met back on Good Friday, but Saints have shown a marked improvement since then and a win today would lift the home side above their arch enemy and into third place in the table, two points behind the league leaders Catalans and Warrington.

Saints have won four on the bounce, while Wigan got thumped last time out against the Catalans Dragons at the Magic Weekend, and as a result the bookies were giving the Red Vee an eight-point handicap on the coupon.

Day two, game two of Magic Weekend in Newcastle: St Helens versus Huddersfield with the Saints hoping for a victory to get the second half of a stuttering season on track.

Huddersfield Giants had an even worse record from the last six rounds: just two wins, against Castleford and Catalans.

Saints kicked off in their 1890s retro kit of chocolate and blue, keeping the Giants within their own half and and forcing them to kick from half-way, allowing St Helens to start their first attacking kick from 20m out.

 

The only thing separating the Leeds Rhinos and St Helens on the league table was points difference, the Saints having performed much better in defence over their opening twelve games than the Rhinos, who had themselves scored more points.

Leeds won the round three fixture at the Totally Wicked Stadium, the first loss for Saints after they become World Champions, but after exiting the cup last weekend at the hands of the Wigan Warriors, that seems like a long distant memory for Rhinos fans.

The Saints were favoured by the bookies going into the game with the Rhinos given a six point start on the handicap coupon, but it would all depend on which Rhinos side, Jekyll or Hyde, showed up for the game.

Super League´s involvement in the 2023 Challenge Cup kicked off with the potential for a giant killing in Halifax as the Panthers took on the World Champions St Helens in a round six game at The Shay in front of the cameras from ViaPlay Sport.

The bookies had gone all in for a Saints win, banishing all thoughts of an upset, and with Saints having won the last fifteen consecutive encounters with the side from Halifax.

You must look back twenty-five years for the last Halifax victory over the Saints, and to 1987 for the last time that Halifax beat them in the cup, on that occasion in the final at Wembley.

Anything but a large Saints win was unthinkable.

The final game of round twelve of Super League was the Saturday lunchtime encounter between a down on their luck Champions St Helens and some might say, an over-performing Salford Red Devils as eighth welcomed sixth to the Totally Wicked Stadium in front of the Channel 4 cameras.

A win for the Saints would lift them above the Leeds Rhinos and into seventh, but a win for the visitors could lift them as high as second, should they record a cricket score against Paul Wellens´ unpredictable side.

St Helens had been installed as the bookies favourites for the win, despite them only winning once in their last four outings against a side who had been victorious in their last four.

It was an intriguing prospect.

On a night of five Superleague fixtures, fourth placed Catalans Dragons took on a St Helens side in sixth place in what looked like the game of the round as two sides who are disappointed with their current league position looked for the all-important two points that would help them to keep pace with the league leaders.

Makinson and Walmsley were back for the Champions while the Dragons looked to halt a three-game losing streak which has seem them tumble down the table and without a win since the first of April.

The bookies made the Dragons slight favourites giving Saints a two-point start on the handicap coupon, the home side looking to restore some French pride after last weekend´s crushing international defeats.