LAST February Penrith hosted the World Club Challenge in what seemed to me in a half-hearted way, going down to St Helens 12-13 in front of only 13,873 spectators.
On Saturday night Wigan showed them how to stage a game of such magnitude, having sold out the stadium weeks ago and staging a pre-game show that included Heather Small and Russell Watson to build a tremendous atmosphere in the stadium.
Like many NRL clubs in the past, Penrith last year appeared to view the World Club Challenge as being on only a slightly higher plane than a pre-season trial game.
And they paid the price.
St Helens showed them how to prepare for a World Club Challenge game and this year they seemed to take the hint, looking more serious about their mission on their visit to England than they did about winning the title on their own soil.
It was great to see them, they were here to win and they very nearly did so.
They battled to the end and it came down to a video-referee decision in the final seconds of the game when Taylan May went for the corner and was tackled by Abbas Miski and Jai Field. Did he get the ball down?
I didn’t think so and, crucially, neither did referee Liam Moore. And the video referee Chris Kendall couldn’t find enough evidence to overturn the decision, although if the referee had sent it up as a possible try, I wonder whether he would have seen any evidence to overturn that decision.
Such was the closeness of this match between two great teams.
Unfortunately in the modern game, however, close matches invariably lead to controversy, usually in relation to decisions by referees or video referees.
And this match had its fair share, with the most notable one being the decision to award Jake Wardle the try that put Wigan in front on 53 minutes.
Sitting in the stadium, I found it difficult to tell by looking at the big screen whether the try had been scored or not. “Not quite there?” I wrote. “No, it’s a try!”
There were two issues with that score – did Wardle make a double movement and did he reach the line to touch the ball down?
Many people would answer “yes” to the first question and “no” to the second.
But it was debatable and Chris Kendall decided that he couldn’t contradict the referee’s decision.
In relation to the grounding, one of the problems lies with the different camera angles from which we look at the incident.
The disappointing thing for me was that Bevan French’s potential match-winning try from an audacious Harry Smith kick was turned down, apparently because he didn’t have both feet behind the kicker in accordance with the international rules of the game. In our competition, that stipulate that only one foot has to be behind the kicker, the try might well have been given.
It was such an interesting game in so many ways.
Probably 75 percent of the game was played in the Wigan half and, as I said to Penrith coach Ivan Cleary afterwards, if someone had told me before the game how much the Panthers would dominate the game territorially, I would have thought there could only be one result.
It began when Willie Isa failed to play the ball correctly on the third tackle of the match and from that point onwards the Panthers were continually ending their tackle sets in the Wigan half, while Harry Smith for Wigan was usually kicking from inside his own half.
The Wigan defence did a remarkable job in holding Penrith out and much of that was due to the brilliance of Jai Field as the last line of their defence. Field’s reputation is as a brilliant attacking player but on Saturday night he demonstrated what a brilliant reader he is of an opposition attack with some spellbinding tackles.
He was a great player in a great game on a great night with a great team in a great atmosphere.
And it couldn’t be any greater than that.
