MARTYN SADLER reflects on a masterful performance from Wigan in their Challenge Cup semi-final victory over St Helens on Saturday.

SOME people claimed to have seen it coming.
If they are telling the truth, they are far more astute judges than I am.
I thought the semi-final between Wigan and St Helens would end with a final margin of perhaps a couple of points either way, but 32 points was beyond all my pre-game expectations.
Having said that, though, I have a theory that you can sometimes predict the result quite accurately after the first five minutes.
In this game there were two incidents in that time that pointed firmly to a Wigan victory.
The first came in the first tackle, when St Helens captain Matty Lees stayed down after trying to tackle Wigan forward Luke Thompson.
After several minutes of treatment, Lees left the field looking grim-faced with his left knee clearly injured and he would be unable to make a return.
That was a massive blow for Saints.
And the second pointer towards a Wigan victory came just under the five-minute mark, when Saints winger Lewis Murphy couldn’t hold a potentially scoring pass that might have led to Saints taking the lead.
Murphy’s last game had been in the quarter-final four weeks earlier against Catalans. He later grew into the game but in the early stages he seemed to struggle to adapt back into his place in the team.
Jack Welsby had returned to the side a week earlier, when he had been selected on the bench against York after a lengthy injury absence, and for this game he replaced Jonny Lomax at stand-off, with Tristan Sailor playing his fifth successive game at fullback.
With hindsight I wonder whether those two players would have been better selected the other way round. Sailor has played more games at stand-off so far this season, while Welsby in my view is much more effective at fullback.
Did the game mean more to Wigan after their stunning defeat against St Helens on Good Friday, when Saints scored four tries in the final eight minutes of that game to turn a 10-24 deficit into a 34-24 victory?
After the game Matty Peet and his players gave that impression.
Revenge is a dish best served cold and it was easy to see how satisfied they were with their achievement at the end of the game, with Peet making a cutting remark about Saints losing their identity by cheering so loudly the two late tries scored by Hull KR loanee Bill Leyland on Good Friday.
I suspect that Saints would strongly contest his claim.
But the point is that Wigan did play extremely well, employing a strong kicking game by Harry Smith, who was returning to action after a three-match suspension, and strong running games by all their backs.
I was particularly struck by the performance of Noah Hodkinson, who had stepped onto the left wing to replace the injured Liam Marshall and a week earlier had scored a hat-trick of tries against Bradford.
I didn’t think he put a foot wrong the whole game, catching every kick that came his way and occasionally doing a bit extra, such as when he ran the ball out of his own in-goal area in the 21st minute, avoiding the need to concede a goal-line drop-out, and when he made a great, potentially try-saving tackle on Owen Dagnall in the 38th minute just before he again got out of his in-goal area with more brilliant footwork.
Marshall won’t recover in time for Wembley, so we can look forward to young Hodkinson parading his talents at the national stadium.
Jack Farrimond also had a great game and it will be tough on him when he has once more to concede his place in the starting line-up to Bevan French, if that is indeed what happens.
So the ultimate story of the game was that Wigan were able once more to put one over their greatest rivals, who they will play at least four times this season, including at the Magic Weekend in July.
St Helens and Wigan had been drawn together four times previously in Challenge Cup semi-finals, although they had played each other five times, given that the first time they played, in 1930, it required a replay to determine which of them would go to Wembley.
As it turned out, it was St Helens who triumphed 22-10 in a replay at Leigh’s then Mather Lane ground on April 2 of that year in front of 24,000 fans, three days after they had drawn 5-5 at Swinton’s Station Road ground in front of 37,169.
Saints went on to lose the Challenge Cup final 10-3 to Widnes at Wembley in front of 36,544.
The next three occasions were in far more recent times – 1990, 2011 and 2022 – but on each occasion Wigan triumphed and would go on to win the Challenge Cup against Warrington, Leeds and Huddersfield respectively.
So the omens looked good for the Cherry and Whites on Saturday and so it proved.
And the omens suggest that Wigan will follow up this victory with a win at Wembley at the end of this month.
But I rather doubt that the scoreline will be so one-sided in that game, especially as I doubt whether Willie Peters and his players believe in omens.