Mind the Gap?

At this stage of the 2020 Super League season, every side bar one had been defeated at least once and won at least once. The 2021 season has a very different look. Five sides remain undefeated and four sides are yet to win. Should we be concerned by a seemingly-increasing gap between the top teams and the lower teams?

The Super League table has that all too familiar look. St Helens are top and Wigan are second. That's how the league looked at this stage in 2020. That's how the league finished in 2019. And 2018. And 2020, but the placings were reversed.

The 2020 Super League semi finals saw St Helens and Wigan ruthlessly blitz their opponents and reach the Grand Final with an almost uncomfortable level of ease. How can this duopoly be broken?

In the past, we decided that the way to increase competition was to lower the bar. We expanded the play offs to more than half of the league. We gave teams who lost more than half of their regular season matches a chance to call themselves champions. A reversion to a reduced play off system was a tacit admission that this was an error.

But, St Helens and Wigan are not the only two sides yet to taste defeat in 2021. Catalans, Castleford and Hull FC also boast unbeaten starts too. And St Helens and Wigan have, at times, looked far from their imperious best. 

St Helens' matches have followed the same pattern, they have laboured in the first half and pulled away in the second. Wigan had to rely on a second half fightback to defeat Leigh, for example. Both sides have had kind starts to the season in terms of fixtures and have not swept all before then. So they are there to be shot at.

The first indication of where the challengers stand should come on Thursday night, when Castleford travel to Wigan. Castleford seem to have used Darryl Powell's announced departure as a motivating factor rather than allowing it to derail them. They have appeared to embody a team unit. Thursday will prove a major test as to whether they are capable of mixing it with the best.

The natural candidate when talking about a new name on the Super League trophy is Warrington. A club with great resource, more than enough to challenge for, and more importantly, win the Super League title. They have stuttered at the start of the season and need to show signs of improvement if they want to challenge this year, especially in attack, which has only clicked against Leigh.

Hull FC are more of an unknown quantity. The team is largely the same as last season, the biggest change coming in the coaching box. Brett Hodgson has a strong reputation from his time at Widnes and in the NRL and there is early evidence that his Hull FC side has a far stronger attitude than its previous incarnations (even those with the same players).

I have been surprised by Catalans. With the departures of Sam Moa and Remi Casty and early-season suspension of Michael McIlorum, I questioned whether they had the firepower up front to repeat their impressive 2020 season. It has unquestionably been their backline that has stolen the show, with Sam Tomkins shining from the full back position. Their starting 17 looks strong, but there are question marks when it comes to depth and a lingering reticence to bleed French talent. Just six of their 17 in victory over Salford were French-born. 

The only other side currently in Super League to have won the competition is Leeds. They have only won one match so far. But they are suffering badly from injuries and have had to bleed many young players who have played infrequently at any level for over a year due to the pandemic. They will improve when their big names return, but a contest for the title still seems to be at least a year too soon.

Over the last few years, there has been a gap between St Helens, Wigan and the rest. The first three rounds has seen a group of teams emerge who aim to bridge the gap.  What the first three rounds also show is a further gap to the remaining teams in Super League.

The fact that Leigh have not won a match from their opening three fixtures of Wigan, Warrington and Castleford isn't a surprise. But the fact that Huddersfield, who form part of that group, have looked so insipid against opposition that they would have expected to challenge and arguably beat is a surprise.

It is hard to draw conclusions from just three rounds of action. Especially where some of the better clubs have been kept apart, until (it is hoped) fans return to stadiums next month. Yet equally, we cannot ignore that the table is showing an unusual gap so early in the season.

In the coming weeks we will learn whether this gap is an artificially created anomaly or a true representation between the haves and have nots.