PAUL Wellens has blasted Sky pundit Phil Clarke for claiming St Helens are 'effectively cheating' their way to victory.
The former player pointed out the four-times defending champions slowing the ruck too much at Huddersfield and conceding set restarts.
He said: “Maybe one of the reasons why Huddersfield and other teams can’t score against St Helens is that they’d rather slow down the opposition and concede six more tackles in their belief that ‘We’ll defend, as long as it’s not quick, we can defend our try line for two minutes.’
“Maybe that’s something that the game’s administrators need to look at. They played a game last year against Salford where they effectively cheated at the end.
“I do think that the game needs to be stricter at penalising sides that are purposefully holding down players or concede penalties or six agains near to their own try line.”
But boss Wellens has fired back at the ‘ill-judged’ comments around his side.
He says it is in fact Saints that are not getting to play quickly because of other sides’ tactics.
He said: “Phil’s a right to his opinion but he was a little ill-judged, particularly when he used the word cheating.
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“One thing this team hasn’t done is cheated its way to success over the last few years.
“I don’t think there’s a coach in Super League, the NRL or rugby as a whole in the world who isn’t trying to get their players to win tackles and in effect slow down the opposition.
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“I can tell you from facts and stats in 2021, when we won the competition, we had the average slowest play the ball in the competition.
“In 2022, when we went on and won the competition, we had the slowest play the ball in the competition.
“We currently sit joint last at the moment in terms of the average play the ball speed. So I’ll ask Phil, who’s lying on who?
“With the devastating ball carriers that we have, we don’t have much luck in terms of coming out on top of the average play the ball speed.
“Opinions are opinions. Sometimes we need to look at the facts.”
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