Super League: St Helens 28-8 Catalans Dragons - Saints win 2022 season opener

Tommy Makinson scored two of St Helens' four first-half tries

Defending champions St Helens fought back to overpower 12-man Catalans Dragons in a bruising opening game of the 2022 Super League season.

Fouad Yaha put Catalans ahead in a repeat of the 2021 Grand Final but two tries from Tommy Makinson, plus James Roby and Lewis Dodd scores followed.

The second half was a real slugfest, as the game threatened to boil, notably when Catalans' Dylan Napa was sent-off.

Joey Lussick and Konrad Hurrell tries added extra gloss to the Saints win.

• Relive Saints' opening night victory over Catalans

Just two points separated the two teams at Old Trafford when Saints were triumphant 12-10 in October, and likewise just a point at the Magic Weekend when Catalans won to snatch the League Leaders' Shield.

However, there was to be no close-fought drama in this coming together of last season's heavyweights, as Kristian Woolf's side showed craft and graft to outwit the Dragons.

Much of the pre-season talk has rested on whether Jack Welsby and Dodd were capable of carrying the weight of a fourth-straight Super League title for Saints, but they did just that in an impressive opening display.

They controlled the Saints attack with slick hands and incisive kicking along with Jonny Lomax, on the back of the rolling forward work from pack men such as Alex Walmsley, Agnatius Paasi and man-of-the-match back-rower Joe Batchelor.

While the hosts did not always retain their cool, with Morgan Knowles sin-binned as Napa was dismissed for a shoulder charge on Mark Percival after 71 minutes, they stood up to the ferocity of the Dragons forwards and dominated the ruck.

Catalans failed to make the best of their early promise, after Josh Drinkwater created a try for Yaha with a precise kick.

Yet their own vaunted spine of Sam Tomkins, Mitchell Pearce and Drinkwater struggled to ignite. Their forwards sought to intimidate and lost control at times, notably when Gil Dudson was sin-binned in the first minute of the game despite winning a penalty.

Even tougher for coach Steve McNamara is the potential loss of prop Julian Bousquet with an arm injury and Tyrone May with an eye problem.

St Helens: Welsby; Hopoate, Hurrell, Percival, Makinson; Lomax, Dodd; Walmsley, Roby, Lees, Mata'utia, Batchelor, Knowles

Interchanges: Lussick, McCarthy-Scarsbrook, Paasi, Sironen

Catalans: Tomkins; Davies, Whare, Langi, Yaha; Pearce, Drinkwater; Dudson, McIlorum, Napa, McMeeken, Whitley, Garcia

Interchanges: Bousquet, May, Dezaria, Kasiano

Referee: L. Moore.

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