Saints beat Salford with Mbye’s golden point

Betfred Super League

St Helens (4) 17

Tries: Makinson, Blake, Batchelor Goals: Percival (2) Drop: Mbye

Salford (4) 16

Tries: Hankinson, Macdonald Goals: Sneyd (4)

Moses Mbye struck a golden-point drop goal to pinch victory for St Helens over Salford.

Tries from Tommy Makinson, Waqa Blake and Joe Batchelor looked to be taking Saints to victory inside 80 minutes.

But Salford stayed in the game with Marc Sneyd’s boot and a try from Chris Hankinson

Nene Macdonald then powered over with 10 minutes remaining to force extra time, before Mbye won it for Saints.

Before the drop goal drama, he produced a superb tackle on Deon Cross with the Salford winger about to score.

Mbye then dropped into the pocket for a first drop goal attempt in normal time that was charged down before a second effort from beyond halfway drifted wide.

Third time lucky, Mbye kicked Saints up to fourth in the table, leapfrogging Salford on points difference.

The home side opened the scoring with a superb finish in the left corner by Makinson for his 187th Super League try, moving him to seventh on the list of top try scorers.

Salford then lost Joe Shorrocks to the sin-bin for pulling back Daryl Clark off the ball with Clark about to go under the posts, but forced two penalties of their own for Sneyd to kick them level the break.

After half-time, Saints quickly scored their second try as Curtis Sironen freed his arms in the tackle and offloaded for Blake to score before Percival landed the conversion from out wide.

Salford quickly responded as Sneyd’s grubber in goal was touched down by Hankinson’s fingertips.

The home side retook the lead after a break from Harry Robertson led to Batchelor going over.

Batchelor was then sin-binned for a high tackle, with Salford’s Oliver Partington following him for his reaction.

And with both sides down to 12 men, Macdonald powered over to level the score once again.

St Helens head coach Paul Wellens:

“That was a huge play. Believe it or not, we train for those moments. We train for chaos because big games can get chaotic at times.

“There’s nothing you can do about that but what you do is have to handle chaos, and I thought we did that really well.

“Moses’ tackle on Deon Cross when he looked, for all money, he was going to score a try, was outstanding. Without it we probably don’t win the game.

“I can’t speak highly enough of Moses. He had a big hand in a lot of the big moments.”

Salford head coach Paul Rowley told BBC Radio Manchester:

“Games are won and lost on big moments and there were a couple in there.

“A try-saving tackle from St Helens, so credit to them for that.

“And then us not dealing with their attack to allow them into drop-goal territory.”

St Helens: Robertson, Mackinson, Blake, Percival, Ritson, Mbye, Lees, Dodd, Clark, Paasi, Whitley, Sironen, Knowles,

Interchanges: Walmsley, Batchelor, Bell, Burns, Bennison

Sin-bin: Batchelor

Salford: Brierley, Ryan, Macdonald, Hankinson, Cross, Nikorima, Sneyd, Singleton, Shorrocks, Bullock, Stone, Watkins, Partington

Interchanges: Wright, Mellor, Dudson, Lewis, Atkin

Sin-bin: Shorrocks, Partington

Referee: Chris Kendall.