Super League: St Helens 4-26 Warrington Wolves
Last Updated: 04/06/16 11:05am
Warrington cruised to a comfortable 26-4 derby victory to inflict a third successive Super League defeat on St Helens and increase the pressure on coach Keiron Cunningham.
While the win keeps Wolves in touch with table-topping Hull, Saints' defeat leaves them eight points adrift of the pacesetters and in serious danger of being cut adrift from the top four.
Trailing 26-0, St Helens looked like being nilled at home for the first time in the league for 36 years but at least avoided that ignominy with Jonny Lomax's late consolation try.
The Wolves, who gave a first start to former Leeds prop forward Ryan Bailey in the absence of Ben Westwood and Ashton Sims, were dominant from the start, largely through the efforts of playmaker Chris Sandow, who is quickly making up for lost time after his two-month injury lay-off.
Saints had captain Jon Wilkin once more operating as a makeshift scrum-half and sorely missed the nous of the injured Luke Walsh on the last play.
The result was that, despite enjoying plenty of possession in the first half, Saints found themselves trailing 16-0 at the break and effectively out of contention.
Second rower Ben Currie had opened the scoring in the sixth minute, taking Sandow's delayed pass to cross for his 11th try of the season, but a couple of handling errors from winger Gene Ormsby put the visitors under pressure and they had much defending to do in order to keep their early lead intact.
It was against the run of play when Sandow increased the lead, jinking his way past a wrong-footed Atelea Vea for a solo try on 18 minutes, and Saints went close to pulling a try back when forward Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook got on the end of Wilkin's high kick but could not control the touchdown.
Currie then demonstrated a little-used string to his bow by kicking neatly over the St Helens defence for centre Ryan Atkins to mark the 300th appearance of his career with a try and Kurt Gidley's second goal made it 16-0.
Any hope of a fightback was snuffed out within three minutes of the re-start when hooker Daryl Clark broke through the heart of the Saints defence and full-back Stefan Ratchford was in support to finish off.
The calamitous state of St Helens defence was illustrated on 48 minutes when winger Adam Swift completely missed the ball from Gidley's grubber kick on the last tackle to gift centre Rhys Evans a try that extended the lead to 26-0.
St Helens' misery was compounded with the loss of centre Jordan Turner, who was carried off on a stretcher after a lengthy stoppage for treatment on the pitch.
They at least held Warrington at bay for the last half an-hour but rarely looked like troubling a well-marshalled defence until Lomax found a chink seven minutes from the end to grab a token score.