MARTYN SADLER reflects on Wakefield’s Championship Grand Final victory and a remarkable new record.
This article originally appeared in this week’s issue of League Express.
I’ve been going down to Belle Vue for more years than I care to remember, but there haven’t been many nights that can compare with what happened on Saturday.
Trinity’s 36-0 victory confirmed the club’s regeneration under their new owner Matthew Ellis and they will now return to Super League after the release of the new club gradings this Wednesday ready to hit the ground running under their coach Daryl Powell.
It was a hugely atmospheric night that must have been quite awe inspiring for the Toulouse players, who competed well for the first quarter of the game but ultimately had to yield to a team that was a Super League squad already in all but name.
It did remind me a little of the game against Featherstone at Huddersfield on 26 September in 1998, when Trinity prevailed 24-22 in front of 8,224 fans equally divided between supporters of both sides.
That game was more thrilling because promotion to Super League would be the reward for the winning team.
But Saturday night’s game was no less emotional, partly because the Trinity fans were saying goodbye to some of their favourite players and partly because we were witnessing the creation of history, with their fullback Max Jowitt kicking three first-half conversions to become the first player in the history of the game to score 500 points in a season, and in doing so he went past Lewis Jones’ record of 496 points that had existed since 1957.
I’m a great believer in being present at historical moments and I can imagine those who were there on Saturday night telling their grandchildren many years hence all about it.
But the night certainly wasn’t just about Jowitt.
Matty Ashurst, Jermaine McGillvary and Derrell Olpherts will all be leaving Trinity now that the season is over and they chipped in to score five of Trinity’s seven tries between them.
Olpherts scored the first and the sixth, Ashurst scored the second and McGillvary scored the third and the last, while also converting his own try from the touchline.
All three players were given tremendous receptions both when they scored and at the end of the game.
And the same applied to Luke Gale, who didn’t score but was very influential throughout the game. The former three-times Albert Goldthorpe Medal winner will now coach the Trinity Academy squad and I have little doubt that he will have what it takes to do a fine job.
It’s a shame that promotion to Super League didn’t depend on the result of the game, but as it turns out, the IMG grading system, which this Wednesday will see London Broncos fall short of Super League while Trinity will be in the top twelve grading scores, effectively achieved the same result.
The one thing that did surprise me about the event was that Wakefield didn’t put as much emphasis on Jowitt’s remarkable achievement as we might have expected.
As far as I could hear, the PA announcer didn’t refer to the record as Max kicked his conversions.
And the RFL didn’t mark the significance of the achievement as much as I thought they might, although now that it has been finally achieved, they might do something to acknowledge it this week, while Max heads off on his honeymoon, having got married last Thursday.
Wakefield will be worthy members of Super League next year and they will surely do what every club hopes, which is to take plenty of away support with them to every other ground, at least to judge from the atmosphere on Saturday night.
But what will happen now to Toulouse Olympique?
I’m reliably informed that they are unlikely to be among the top twelve teams when the grading scores are released this Wednesday.
They face another year in the Championship with very little certainty that they will run up a sufficient gradings score in future to get into Super League.
And yet we need a second French team in the competition, ideally as one of 16 Super League clubs in total.
The concern, however, is that they will give up the ghost and pull out of the Championship next season, particularly when we consider the fact that they have to pay for all their opponents to travel to France.
What a tragedy that would be.
The IMG gradings system has already dealt a hammer-blow to Rugby League in London and it would be iconic if it did the same to Rugby League in France.
But unfortunately, that outcome looks all too likely.
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