Field and Miski give Wigan derby win over Saints

Betfred Super League

Wigan (12) 24

Tries: Field 2, Miski 2 Goals: Smith 4

St Helens (2) 14

Tries: Murphy, Paasi Goals: Whitby 3

Jai Field and Abbas Miski scored two tries apiece to lead Wigan Warriors to victory in their Good Friday derby despite a strong St Helens comeback in the second half.

Field, Super League's leading try scorer, scored either side of a Miski score to give the reigning champions a commanding 18-2 lead early in the second half.

Saints looked down and out as both sides committed errors in a tense encounter, but Lewis Murphy's brilliant finish in the corner and a powerhouse try from Agnatius Paasi dragged them back to within four points.

With new signing Christian Wade watching from the stands, Wigan clinched it with a late Miski try to move on to the shoulder of pace-setters Hull Kingston Rovers at the top of the table.

After suffering two defeats in March, the reigning champions have now won three on the bounce to move two points behind the Robins, and they made a powerful statement with a dominant performance against their old rivals from the other side of Billinge Hill.

In front of a sell-out 25,000 crowd at the Brick Community Stadium, the two sides exchanged penalties in a cagey start, with Field having a try chalked off by video referee Liam Rush, who spotted that Tyler Dupree has obstructed George Delaney's attempted tackle.

A few minutes later, Field nailed a try which did count, timing his run to perfection to gather Bevan French's exquisite lobbed kick and score under the posts.

Wigan turned the screw and, when the influential Harry Smith put up a testing kick, French got a telling touch that went backwards and Miski had acres of space to go over and extend their lead.

Moses Mbye's shoulder barge to the head of Zach Eckersley further hindered Saints as the Saints hooker trooped off to the sin-bin, but shortly into the second half the numbers were evened up as Sam Walters caught Jon Bennison high and was shown a yellow card.

Paasi handed Wigan what seemed to be the winning try, by trying a silly offload deep in his own territory. The Warriors were ruthless, and Smith sent Field racing through for his second try.

With Joe Batchelor limping off with an apparent hamstring injury and Jon Bennison needing a head injury assessment, Saints looked finished but they rallied well to stage a grand ending.

Wigan started to make uncharacteristic errors and when one from Liam Byrne gifted them possession, Tristan Sailor gave Murphy a chance which he finished with a spectacular leap in the corner.

Buoyed up, Saints went surging forwards and when Jake Wardle also spilled the ball in front of his own posts, Paasi made up for his earlier mistake by powering over despite being decorated by three tacklers.

Inside nine minutes, the lead had been cut to four points, but the travelling fans' belief dissipated as Sailor sought to launch another attack but dropped the ball, allowing Eckersley to scoop it up and send Miski over to make sure of Wigan's third win over their rivals on the trot.

St Helens coach Paul Wellens told BBC Radio Merseyside:

"I'm slightly frustrated with the way we started the game for the first 40 minutes. We put ourselves under a lot of pressure with basic unforced errors and if you do that against a team of the quality of Wigan, with players like Bevan French and Jai Field who can hurt you, you put yourself under unnecessary pressure.

"I was immensely proud of the way the team stuck at the task. Obviously 18-2 down away at Wigan is not easy but we went at the game at that point, and I came away thinking that at the very end we had a chance in the game, but it wasn't to be.

"They handled [the wet conditions] better than we did and it comes down to individual lapses in concentration.

"Lesson one on Monday morning will be play-the-ball. If you can't play the ball properly there's no point practising anything else."

Wigan: Field; Miski, Eckersley, Wardle, Marshall; French; Smith; Byrne, Leeming, Walters, Nsemba, Farrell, Ellis

Interchanges: O'Neill, Forber, Dupree, Hill

St Helens: Sailor; Bennison, Whitley, Percival, Murphy; Welsby, Whitby; Walmsley, Mbye, Lees, Sironen, Batchelor, Knowles

Interchanges: Clark, Paasi, Delaney, Sambou

Referee: Chris Kendall