It was, without doubt, the game of the nineteenth round of Super League 2024 as top of the table Wigan Warriors took on a Warrington Wolves side sat in second place and knowing that a win by twenty points or more could send them to the top of the table, depending on the size of Hull KR’s win over London Broncos.

Wigan needed to get back on the bike after last weeks shock loss against Hull FC, the most incredible result of the season so far, while Warrington came into the game flying high after last weeks victory over St Helens, despite being reduced to twelve men for sixty minutes.

Wigan were favourites with the bookies, home advantage meaning that they were handicapped on the coupon by four points, the Wolves looking to end a seven-game losing streak against the Warriors.

Second travelled the short journey to fourth as Warrington Wolves looked to get within two points of the league leaders against a St Helens side who came into the game on the back of three consecutive losses and in danger of dropping to sixth by the end of the weekend and losing four on the bounce for the first time in six years.

The home side were slight favourites with the bookies for a win but with just a two-point handicap on the coupon it promised to be the tightest of games at the end of a sweltering day as summer arrived.

Warrington won the only encounter between the two sides in 2024, eliminating Saints from the Challenge Cup at the quarter final stage, but you have to go back to June 2021 to find the last Warrington victory in a Super League encounter.

Under the recently announced new coaching stewardship of former Paramatta Eels coach Brad Arthur, at least until the end of the season, the Leeds Rhinos were looking for a turnaround in form and performance as they made the ominous trip to Warrington to take on a Wolves side who were looking to go second and to get within two points of the Wigan Warriors at the top of the table.

A win for the Rhinos would lift them level on points with six placed Catalans Dragons but they needed a massive points win to lift them above the side from the south of France.

Leeds had a ten-point start on the coupon, many Rhinos supporters feeling that the advantage was a little stingy on behalf of the bookmakers as they feared a larger defeat despite the new man in charge.

Hull FC were looking for back to back Super League wins for the first time in 2024 but they were likely to find Warrington Wolves a far tougher prospect than last weeks Leeds Rhinos side who they had faced just hours before the fall of the Rohan empire.

Warrington are in danger of slipping down the table and into the lower play-off places and need a couple of confidence boosting wins after three consecutive losses while you must search back as far as July 2023 to find the last time that the FC players took home winner pay two rounds running.

The bookies thought it was a foregone conclusion as they gave the home side a twelve-point start on the coupon but with a little bit of confidence tucked under their belt from last week, the Airlie Birds were confident of springing a surprise.

    

The round thirteen Saturday afternoon fixture saw a top of the table clash between a second placed Wigan Warriors side needing an eighteen-point win to go top of the table, against the third placed Warrington Wolves who knew they could join St Helens on twenty league points with a victory.

Despite their closeness on the league table the bookies believed that this would be a comfortable victory for the away side as they gave the Wolves a fourteen-point start on the handicap coupon.

It was a packed Halliwell-Jones which welcomed the two sides to the field for a mouthwatering clash as the they met for the first time in 2024, a dress rehearsal for next weekend’s Challenge Cup final at Wembley.

Huddersfield Giants were looking for a repeat of their Challenge Cup 2022 final appearance, they faced the tough proposition of a game against a Warrington Wolves side who lifted the trophy on their last appearance in a final back in 2019.

The bookies had made Warrington slight favourites for the win and to set up a Wembley final against the Wigan Warriors on the 8th June as they gave Huddersfield a six point start on the handicap coupon.

This was the sides first meeting of the season, Huddersfield trailing their opponents by six points in the league table, all likelihood was that this would be the Wolves afternoon in the sunshine in St Helens.

It was a tasty looking game to open round eleven of Super League 2024 as two of the six sides sharing the top of the table met at the Halliwell Jones Stadium as the second placed Warrington Wolves took on a buoyant Hull Kingston Rovers side who began the night in fourth spot.

One of these sides would be two points clear at the end of eighty minutes while depending on results elsewhere in the round, the other could conceivably drop outside the top six and the all-important play-off places.

Warrington were the slight favourites with the bookies, handicapped four points on the coupon, but there would be no underestimating a Hull KR side which has shocked pundits and delighted their home support with a fantastic start to the season and who ran them very close when the two sides met in March.

Making the short trip to the Salford Community Stadium in Salford, the Warrington Wolves had one eye on the top of the table, but the other looking over their shoulder at Salford in the knowledge that a victory would see them move above St Helens while a reversal of great magnitude could see them drop below their opponents on points difference.

The Wolves were slight favourites for the win with the bookmakers, but the Red Devils were only given a four-point start on the handicap coupon, most commentators were unsure of the outcome with both clubs realistic prospects for a top six finish.

After yesterday’s shock reversals in round nine, anything could happen.

After putting the Rhinos to the sword in round seven, you could find few people who would back against a similar scoreline at the felidae versus canidea encounter between the Wolves and the Leopards which took place on a round eight Saturday afternoon at the Halliwell-Jones.

A Wolves win by twenty-three or more points would see them back above St Helens to the top of the table, at least for a couple of hours until the Dragons played Hull KR in the south of France, while a win for ninth placed Leigh would at least give them some breathing space to the bottom of the table, but it would still leave them four points adrift of eighth placed Leeds Rhinos.

The bookies were predicting a twelve-point win for the home side but in doing so were giving some credit to a Leopards side who are improving week on week but not getting the league points that their efforts deserve.

The bookies fancied St Helens to make progress in the Challenge Cup and join a semi-final line-up of Hull KR, Huddersfield Giants, and the Wigan Warriors, as they welcomed the Warrington Wolves to the Totally Wicked Stadium with an eight-point handicap on the coupon.

With no meeting so far in 2024, the last time that the two sides met was back in September 2023 when the Saints were the victors by 16-8, but the last time that there was a meeting in the Challenge Cup, also a quarter final stage, back in 2020 it was Warrington who secured the win before losing to Salford in the semi-final.

Huddersfield experienced the ‘magic of the cup’ when they beat the Dragons in France last night, the question on everyone’s lips was whether this Sunday afternoon would be Warrington’s turn.

When the just two points cover the top seven teams in the competition then many games become top of the table clashes and a Friday night encounter between the Leeds Rhinos and Warrington Wolves at Headingley Stadium was one such occasion.

A big win for the Wolves, by a margin of more than twenty points, would see them back to the top of the table and while victory for the Rhinos would see them level with at least three other teams on points, they would need an unachievable winning margin of at least ninety-one points to overtake Wigan on points difference.

The bookies made the home side slight favourites for the win and handicapped them by four points on the coupon, it promised to be a close match between two sides who are still seeking some 2024 consistency.

Rivals round threw together two rivals whose rivalry wasn’t based on geography as the Warrington Wolves took on the Catalans Dragons at the Halliwell-Jones Stadium in a top of the table battle which would see the winner draw level with St Helens in top spot.

The Dragons won the encounter between the two sides in the south of France on the opening weekend, but the Wolves are starting to find some form in recent weeks.

The Wolves were slight favourites with the bookies for the win and had been handicapped by four points on the coupon but there really was very little to choose between the two sides as the neutrals settled down to watch a close game between two competitive sides with Grand Final aspirations.

Just a week after the two sides met in the nation’s capital, Warrington Wolves and London Broncos met again in the Challenge Cup, this time at the Halliwell Jones Stadium as London tried to put the previous weekends hammering out of their minds and focus on the slim chance of cup progress.

London had been given a thirty-eight-point start on the coupon and if you fancied a flutter ten you could get 100/1 on a Broncos win, there was zero chance of an upset and every potential that it could be a cricket score in Warrington’s favour.

Warrington made a couple of changes to last week, but it was a fundamental shuffle in the pack for London in the hope of bolstering up round fives paper thin defence.

Warrington Wolves travelled east to take on Hull KR as two of the sides who hope to be in contention for the top six at the end of the season met with a chance to go to the top of the table, at least for twenty-four hours.

Nial Evalds replaced Joe Burgess for the Robins while Sam Burgess’s side saw the returns of George Williams, Connor Wrench and Jordy Crowther.

Hull KR were favourites for the win with the Wolves being given a four-point start on the handicap with both sides knowing that a win would send them second, a big win for either side sending them above St Helens into top spot, but most pundits thought it would be a close game.

Two sides looking for their first win of the 2024 season met in round two at the Halliwell-Jones Stadium as Sam Burgess’s Warrington Wolves took on Tony Smith’s Hull FC for a place in the top half of the table.

FC made a host of changes to their line-up, some forced by suspensions, some by injury and others tactical while the hosts were without Lindop, Williams (injured) and Crowther (suspended) with Stefan Ratchford only being brought back into the side as eighteenth man.

The bookies made their minds up on the winner ahead of kick off with the home side rated as massive odds-on favourites, Hull FC being given a twenty-point start on the handicap coupon.

It was a round one baptism of fire for Sam Burgess’s Warrington Wolves as they hopped on the place to Perpignan for a Saturday evening encounter with the Catalans Dragons who went into battle for the first time in the post-Tomkins era.

There is no denying that Burgess was a giant of the game as a player, having battled for ten years at the top of the Australian game, but fans of Warrington and neutrals alike were wondering how his no-nonsense playing style would translate into his coaching ethos.

Pre-match the bookies were struggling to pick a side and gave the visitors just a four-point start on the coupon as it promised to be a great season opening battle in front of the partisan Dragons crowd in the South of France.

A place in the play off semi-finals awaited and a win for St Helens would see them travelling to Perpignan next week to take on the Catalans Dragons, while should the Warrington Wolves spring a surprise and get the win then they would be travelling to Wigan next week while last nights winners, Hull KR, would be getting on the plane to France.

St Helens have won all three encounters so far in 2023, by twenty-two points at home in April, and by four and then twelve in the meetings in July and a fortnight ago at the Halliwell-Jones.

Warrington had been given a twelve-point start on the handicap coupon after suffering a monumental fall in form following a stunning start to the season, and all but their most optimistic fans were expecting a Wolves defeat and Saints marching closer to another Grand Final.

In what had widely been dubbed the play off for the play offs, the Salford Red Devils welcomed the Warrington Wolves to the AJ Bell Stadium for a showdown match which would determine whether the fight for the top six would go on for at least another round, or whether the home side would all but mathematically bow out at this stage.

A win for the Red Devils would put them level on points with sixth placed Warrington, and a win by forty-five points or more would lift them above their opponents and into sixth spot with two round remaining.

On the other hand, if the Wolves were to take the points, then they would join Hull KR four points clear of the seventh placed Salford and with them both having a far superior points difference it was effectively over for the Red Devils.

The bookies were struggling to pick a favourite but erred on the side of the visitors, but by a very narrow margin.

Warrington Wolves hadn’t beaten the Wigan Warriors in their last four meetings coming into tonight’s crucial round nineteen encounter at the DW Stadium with both sides tied together on twenty-two points and needing the win to join Leigh Leopards in joint second place.

Wigan won the last encounter, the 14-12 win the Challenge Cup quarter final a month ago and all indications were that tonight’s game could be as close, but Warrington are currently in free fall having lost their last three outings, Wigan looking to bounce back after last weekend’s golden point loss to Wakefield Trinity.

Wigan were the bookies favourites having been handicapped by eight points on the coupon.

Fresh from hammering the Huddersfield Giants six days ago, the Leeds Rhinos made the trip to the Halliwell-Jones to face a Warrington Wolves side who fell to a surprise defeat at the hands of the Castleford Tigers on their last outing.

A win for the home side would put them back level on points with the league leaders, but unless it was by a margin of seventy points or more, they would still be second on points difference, while the Rhinos knew that they couldn’t improve their league position, but could get closer to seventh placed Hull KR.

The Wolves were the slight favourites with the bookies but with the Rhinos only having been given a two-point start on the coupon they really had a dilemma over who would win the game and take the two points.