St Helens win Grand Final after Wigan’s Ben Flower is sent off

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/oct/11/st-helens-wigan-super-league-grand-final-match-report

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It has not been a great week for sporting Flowers. Whatever Kevin Pietersen accused the former England cricket coach Andy Flower of doing in his autobiography, it fell some way short of the attack on Lance Hohaia that earned his namesake Ben the ignominy of becoming the first player dismissed in a Super League Grand Final, after less than three minutes of the match.

The Welsh prop, whose league career had previously been an admirable tale of proving himself in an unfamiliar sporting landscape, will have to live not only with the disgrace of that, but also the knowledge his moment of madness may well have cost Wigan the game – and with it the Super League title.

His team-mates showed all the admirable qualities that had made Wigan such strong favourites to win in defying their numerical disadvantage to take a 6-2 half-time lead, and were still in the contest trailing by only two points with 11 minutes remaining.

But then Tommy Makinson, who had switched from the wing to full-back as part of the reshuffle forced by Flower’s attack on Hohaia, rose to collect a high kick from the Saints stalwart Paul Wellens and had the strength to struggle out of a tackle and ground the ball next to the posts.

Makinson had already pulled off a crucial cover tackle on Liam Farrell when the Wigan forward looked set to give his side the lead again but it was his team-mate James Roby who won the Harry Sunderland Trophy as man of the match for a typically industrious and probing 80-minute performance.

After losing their past five Grand Final appearances between 2007 and 2011, Saints will not be remotely bothered that this win may always be accompanied by an asterisk of what might have been had Wigan maintained their full compliment of players. They have had a strange season, finishing top of the table without ever convincing they were the best team in the competition. The Super League trophy, and a World Club Challenge against South Sydney next February, will do them nicely as an answer to all that.

“It’s down to the winning culture of the club,” said Nathan Brown, the Australian coach who will now return home for family reasons, probably to be succeeded by the Saints great Keiron Cunningham.

“When we lost so many people to injury halfway through the season it was guys like Wellens, Roby and Jon Wilkin who kept saying we could win. I’d go home to my wife and think they were crazy. I’ve never known anything like it in sport.”

The additional loss of Hohaia, their only remaining specialist half-back who had to be helped down the tunnel and was deemed too groggy to return, left Saints with an even stranger attacking formation, with Wellens and Mark Flanagan as their playmakers and the London-born forward Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook at centre.

“I knew once they went down to 12 and we lost Lance that if we won it would be ugly and scrappy,” Brown said. No one at Saints will be bothered about that, either.

At first it was hard to see what Flower had done to infuriate Saints and spark the third-minute melee – although the sight of Hohaia lying on the ground provided a clue. It was only Sky’s replays that showed the extent of Flower’s crime, as not only had he laid out Hohaia with one punch, but he then followed up with another when the New Zealander was flat out.

The referee, Phil Bentham, had no option other than to brandish the red card, leaving Wigan to play the remaining 77 minutes a man short.

Without Hohaia, Saints lost their composure and discipline as well as any semblance of coherence, and Wigan were good value for a 6-2 half-time lead secured by an opportunist finish in the left corner from their latest boy wonder, Joe Burgess.

Saints stepped up the intensity of their defence in the second half, preventing Wigan from escaping their own territory, and forcing the odd error.

It was one of the latter, from the interchange prop Eddy Pettybourne, that handed Saints the position from which they took the lead for the first time in the 54th minute, as the Samoan powerhouse Sia Soliola steamed on to a short pass from Roby and planted the ball over the line. Mark Percival, who had landed a first-half penalty, added an equally simple conversion for that narrow 8-6 advantage.

Wigan’s response was excellent, with only Makinson denying Farrell and Josh Jones conceding a penalty after denying Josh Charnley on the opposite flank. But Matty Smith, the former Saints scrum-half who had kicked Wigan’s first-half penalty, missed the chance to equalise, dragging a tricky shot from wide out across the posts. Makinson ensured he – and, more deservingly, Flower – were suitably punished.