IN their opening game of the season, Wakefield Trinity went down 16-18 at home to the newly promoted Toulouse Olympique.

I suspect that Betfred would probably have quoted odds of around 100/1 against them appearing in this year’s Grand Final after that result.

And that wasn’t the only bad result for Trinity this season.

Wigan beat them 48-10 at Belle Vue in June, while in mid-August St Helens inflicted a 46-16 home defeat on them.

At that point they didn’t look much like title contenders.

And yet here they are, after an astonishing performance that resulted in an almost unbelievable 33-6 victory over Wigan on Saturday.

It’s a truly amazing reversal from that home defeat in June and I guess it won’t be easy for the Wigan coaching staff to figure out just what went wrong.

Of course Wigan had won every game since hammering Hull KR 40-10 at Wembley in the Challenge Cup Final in late May.

And maybe that was part of the problem.

Wigan have had very little recent experience of having to fight their way back into a game when they go behind. Maybe they’ve been too successful for their own good.

The crucial moment, of course, was Adam Keighran’s sinbinning early in the second half, when he tackled Isaiah Vagana when the Wakefield forward has already passed the ball to a teammate.

Keighran objected to the referee that he hadn’t been aware that Vagana no longer had the ball.

And you could see that was true.

Nonetheless, tackling a player without the ball these days results in a yellow card and so Keighran was off the field for ten minutes, following in the footsteps of Wakefield’s Jazz Tevaga, who had been sin binned in the 15th minute for a trip on Wigan winger Liam Marshall.

Brad O’Neill scored a try for Wigan while Tevaga was off the field and my immediate reaction was that it was the opening score in what was likely to be a routine Wigan victory.

But Wakefield fought back with an outstanding performance in both attack and defence, throwing the ball around the field, scoring a great first-half try by Tom Johnstone, who must surely have book his England place for the World Cup next month, and they took the lead with a penalty by Max Jowitt.

The two teams came out for the second half and I anticipated Wigan putting Wakefield under pressure until their defence eventually gave way.

How wrong could I have been?

Instead, Keighran’s sinbinning came in the 46th minute and in the next ten minutes Wakefield scored three tries to take a 24-6 lead.

When Keighran came back onto the field we were surely expecting a Wigan fightback.

But we didn’t get it.

Their star players, who have entertained us so well during the regular season, looked anxious and frustrated.

It actually looked as though Wakefield were a class above Wigan.

And that impression was emphasised when Ky Rodwell scored their fifth try on 59 minutes. Wigan’s defence had been almost impregnable in some games this season, but on Saturday it looked fragile, and Rodwell was able to take advantage to put Trinity 30-6 ahead.

From that point onwards, any Wigan score would just have been a consolation, but they couldn’t even manage that.

Wakefield clearly had come into the game full of confidence and they were clearly fully justified in feeling that way.

What a great job their coach Daryl Powell has done.

And what a great job their recruitment manager Steve Mills has done in bringing players to the club who have added depth and quality to their squad.

Wakefield last won the Championship on 4th May 1968 when they defeated Hull KR 17-10 at Headingley.

It was a game with great stars on both sides, such as Neil and Don Fox for Trinity and Roger Millward and Phil Lowe for Hull KR.

I was at that match as a youngster and I would never have imagined that 58 years later Trinity would never have won another trophy.

And of course there is no guarantee that they’ll beat Warrington on Saturday.

But whatever the result it will be a wonderful game and there will be a new name on the list of Grand Final winners, just as there was with Hull KR last season.

That is just what the game needs.

George’s quick thinking

GEORGE WILLIAMS has come in for plenty of criticism for winning a penalty in the second half of Warrington’s victory over Leeds Rhinos on Friday night.

George looked to me as though he was looking to claim that he was obstructed by James McDonnell when he was chasing a ball that had been kicked over the defence.

If the final margin of victory hadn’t been two points, I don’t suppose the incident would have mattered as much as it did.

McDonnell had his back to George and it is difficult to obstruct someone, I would have thought, if your back is turned towards them.

Nonetheless George was smart enough to persuade the referee Chris Kendall to award the penalty.

And of course Leeds were persuaded to make a captain’s challenge against the decision.

The video-referee was Liam Rush and I was amazed by how little time he spent studying the incident.

I thought he made the wrong decision.

And, to rub salt into the wound, Leeds lost the right to make any more captain’s challenges for the rest of the game.

And there were some incidents later in the game where, if they had retained the right, they could have challenged a decision.

Should George be criticised, as he has been so widely, for winning that penalty?

I don’t think so.

He did what he needed to do for Warrington to win the game.

If he does something similar for England in the World Cup Final in November and it wins the game for us, I suspect most of us won’t complain.

Gamesmanship has always been part of the game.

Alex Murphy, one of the all-time greats, was its greatest exponent.

He won many games for his team by pulling the wool over referees’ eyes.

So let’s not jump to the conclusion that George did anything unique on Friday night.

He just used his Rugby League smarts.

But the video-referee shouldn’t have allowed him to get away with it.