Since the day they first met in the Sydney suburb of Revesby more than 35 years ago, Justin Holbrook and Steve Price always knew their paths would cross in the world of rugby league – though perhaps not with the stakes quite this high.
The Challenge Cup final at Wembley on Saturday between Holbrook’s St Helens and Price’s Warrington is a day of firsts – the first time in rugby league history two sides separated by just nine miles along the A57 will contest a major final and also the first time these childhood friends clash with a trophy at stake.
Over the past 18 months the Saints and the Wire have been the most consistent sides in Super League, but they have not been the most successful.
“When you talk about last year, it still boils my blood,” says Price, who took Warrington to both the Challenge Cup and Grand Finals in his first season in charge, coming up short on both occasions. “It’s our third final in 18 months, and we’re conscious we now need to deliver our best.”
The frustration is similar, if not greater, for Holbrook. Last year the Saints were runaway league leaders, but fell short in the semi-finals of the cup and the play-offs despite being overwhelming favourites in both. “We want – and we have – to make it count this year,” says the 43-year-old, who is in his final few months as St Helens coach before returning to Australia to coach Gold Coast Titans.
Yet despite the respective league standings of first and second suggesting this will be a closely matched final, the form of both sides lately suggests anything but. The Saints are 16 points clear at the top of Super League going into the final, owing to both their own relentless pursuit of a domestic treble plus a run of five consecutive league defeats for the Wolves.
Price quipped last week that his side head to Wembley as the biggest underdogs in the final’s history. Sheffield’s class of 1998 may disagree with that, but there is no doubting that Warrington find themselves in the opposite position they did 12 months ago, when they were hot favourites against Catalans before coming unstuck.
“I’d like to think we can learn from what Catalans did,” Price says. “There’s no pressure on us, it’s all on St Helens. Nobody is giving us a chance and nobody expects us to win. Rightly so, too. Everyone thinks they’ll win and that’s fine by us.” The fact the final on Saturday is also a tale of two key half-backs with contrasting fortunes also perhaps tips the scales seemingly in the Saints’ favour.
Warrington’s mercurial stand-off Blake Austin is absent from their squad because of an ankle injury – but the fact the Wolves have denied media access to their final training run on Friday has only heightened the speculation he could yet play.
In contrast St Helens’ Jonny Lomax is definitely fit – and is one of their key men on Saturday, just three years on from fearing his career was over. “I did think that I wasn’t up to doing this any more,” Lomax says when asked to recall the successive long-term knee injuries which kept him out for almost two years. “I had the second knee operation and it got infected, so I was on a drip for six weeks and thinking about all sorts of stuff, including finishing.
“You panic, you worry, but to be back now … the best thing I could do for everyone who helped me through the dark days is to bring the trophy home.” As a boyhood Saints fan, the fact this is their first trip to Wembley for 11 years makes Saturday extra special for Lomax. But the importance of claiming a major trophy after last year’s heartbreak is not lost on him.
“My earliest memories are of the 1996 final [when St Helens beat Bradford],” Lomax recalls. “You don’t make memories like that anywhere other than Wembley, do you? These are the games we have to win, we know that after last year. If you constantly miss out, you get remembered for the wrong reasons. We want to put that right.”
Price revealed this week that his earliest memories of Holbrook involved him drawing up the game‑plan for their under-9s games in the sandpit in Revesby. The significance of Saturday is far greater but, after numerous near-misses between them in recent years, whoever is lifting rugby league’s most prestigious prize this weekend will finally be remembered for all the right reasons.