Long's drop goal fuels Bradford's sense of injustice

Super League Grand Final: Bradford Bulls 18 St Helens 19: Saints claim the honours as controversial reading of the rule-book punishes hapless Bulls

Sean Long broke Bradford's hearts again in the Super League Grand Final, with the Bulls' hurt intensified by the conviction that they were the victims of an injustice as well as of the Saints' scrum-half.

Long, who kicked the goal that beat Bradford at Old Trafford three years ago, did them again, landing the drop goal, with 49 seconds left on the clock, that decided a contest even more gripping than any of the previous collisions between the two clubs during the Super League era.

On either side of that vital point, there were incidents which left the losers unshakable in their belief that they had been robbed. Their coach, Brian Noble, called the referee, Russell Smith, "gutless" and their players, led by an enraged James Lowes, were raving at him as the hooter sounded.

The rights and wrongs of the argument depend on two of the more obscure corners of the rugby league rule book. The offside penalty awarded against Stuart Fielden, from which Long levelled the scores in the 64th minute, certainly looked harsh. The ball hit a team-mate and then Fielden in front of him. That was surely a case for an accidental offside and a scrum rather than an easy two points.

The final controversy was even more arcane. With 10 seconds to play, Saints' captain, Chris Joynt, took the ball to ground without a hand being laid upon him. A few years ago he would have been penalised for a voluntary tackle, but that rule has been gathering dust on the attic shelf for so long that it would have been the bravest of decisions to award a potentially match-winning kick, even if it had been technically correct.

Joynt explained that the tackler had deliberately stepped out of the way and that theory has since been supported by Smith's boss, the Rugby League's technical executive, Stuart Cummings. He should know, but it looked deeply suspect at the time and running the risk of falling foul of a half-forgotten rule was foolhardy.

None of this would have mattered had Bradford been as far ahead as the best of their play suggested. Noble was right when he claimed that they had been the better team by a distance, but they also made the more damaging errors.

What should have been a handy half-time lead was squandered by conceding two gift tries, the first of them an almost comical affair when defenders stood and waited for a whistle that never came as Mike Bennett crossed for only the second try of his career.

Even then, two excellent tries at the start of the second half, both sparked by the excellent Paul Deacon, seemed to be putting Bradford on their way to their first win over their nemesis in a major final.

But if Deacon was the man of the first 50 minutes, Long took over in the last half hour. Already the scorer of Saints' second try, he supplied the pass to Martin Gleeson for their third, landed that debatable penalty and then always looked the likely game-breaker.

After a couple of misses, and a couple by Deacon, he lined up the winning point and slotted the ball into the St Helens contingent of the record Grand Final crowd.

"You can practice as much as you want, but when there's 61,000 there, it's pretty nerve-racking," he said. "I thought I'd blown my chance when I missed the first one."

Paul Sculthorpe, still a target for the Australian club Penrith despite agreeing a new contract to stay with Saints until 2007, dedicated the victory to Paul Wellens, his team-mate who went off a couple of minutes into the game with a horrible facial injury from a stray boot.

"The boys did the second half for him," said Sculthorpe of the full-back, who now looks certain to miss Great Britain's series against the watching New Zealanders with a suspected cheekbone fracture. Wellens was there for the celebrations at the end, but he looked like the Elephant Man. His departure caused a reshuffle that again underlined the adaptability and resilience of this St Helens side. They might not have been the better side over the 80 minutes, but they know that is not always what counts.

Bradford Bulls 18
Tries: Naylor, Paul, Withers
Converions: Deacon 2
Penalty: Deacon

St Helens 19
Tries: Bennett, Long, Gleeson
Conversions: Long 2
Penalty: Long
Drop goal: Long

Half-time: 8-12 Attendance: 61,138

St Helens: Wellens; Albert, Gleeson, Newlove, Stewart; Sculthorpe, Long; Britt, Cunningham, Ward, Jonkers, Bennett, Joynt.

Substitutes used: Hoppe, Stankevitch, Shiels, Higham.

Bradford Bulls: Withers; Vaikona, Naylor, Costin, Vainikolo; Paul, Deacon; Vagana, Lowes, Fielden, Peacock, Gartner, Forshaw.

Substitutes used: Anderson, McDermott, Gilmour, Pryce.

Referee: R Smith (Castleford).

* Bradford's Tevita Vaikona is out of New Zealand's tour after straining an Achilles tendon in the Grand Final. To complete a bad night, the winger had his house burgled on the same evening.