Hard work and humility: how St Helens scaled rugby league’s summit

F or every great sporting dynasty, there is a line-in-the-sand moment. A point when fortunes change for ever, and a juncture when history begins to be written. Depending on who you ask at St Helens, the answer can vary, but the consensus is that it was May 2017 when they began their journey to becoming the greatest team that England – and perhaps the world – has seen for quite some time.

Having sacked the club legend Keiron Cunningham as head coach and languishing aimlessly in mid-table, Saints faced the very real prospect of missing out on the Super League playoffs for the first time. Their squad included long-serving, veteran players with a group of talented youngsters waiting in the wings. They just needed the right man to mould them – and they settled on an unknown Australian, Justin Holbrook.

“You need an element of luck at times when you bring in an overseas coach,” the club’s chief executive, Mike Rush, says. “You need to hope he settles, hope the family settles … we’ve been fortunate in that regard, but everything else has been down to hard work and planning.”

Holbrook not only settled, he began to transform Saints into a rugby league machine. In 2018 they finished 10 points clear at the top at the end of the regular season, blooding a number of young players who would become modern-day legends in the process.

St Helens missed out on the Grand Final but the following year they defeated Salford at Old Trafford in the 2019 decider. They have not relinquished their grip on the Super League trophy since, becoming champions four years in a row – the first team solely in the Super League era to do so and only the second ever, after the great Wigan side of the 80s and 90s.

Last weekend, they cemented their legacy as