The herculean scale of Warrington Wolves’ defensive effort to beat St Helens shows in the game’s facts and figures.

Hampered by James Harrison’s red card and even spending a spell down to 11 men in the second half, The Wire were never behind in the game and ultimately ran out winners by a convincing scoreline.

It was a display that combined committed defence with clinical attack as they secured a league-and-cup double over their neighbours.

Here are some of the things we noticed from a look at the stats…

A superhuman effort

Despite the number of set completions being equal at 28-28, Warrington had to face the equivalent of just under four extra sets’ worth of carries – Saints’ figure came in at 175 compared to 152 from Wire.

There was the same level of disparity in the number of tackles made – Wire made 290 compared to Saints’ 267 – but the biggest difference came in terms of the amount of attack each side had.

Remarkable, Wire played the ball inside Saints’ 20-metre zone just nine times across the whole game, making the fact they still managed to score enough points to win the match even more impressive.

By contrast, they had to face 38 play-the-balls inside their own 20 from their hosts.

Sharing the load

In this kind of game, one would expect a player to stand out in terms of the defensive figures for tackles made.

However, that was not the case as the Wire players shared the defensive load.

Eight Warrington players made more than 20 tackles for the game, with their highest individual figure being the 31 made by both Ben Currie and Adam Holroyd.

On debut, Luke Yates came in just behind them with 29 tackles.

It may even surprise people to know that the highest tackle figures actually came from Saints players – Matty Lees (35) topped the game’s tackle count just ahead of teammate Moses Mbye (34).

Williams steps up

On both sides of the ball, George Williams played like the true leader he has become.

These are the situations in which you need your star players to step up, and the England captain certainly did that.

Along with his two try assists, Williams ran for 126 metres with the ball – of the rest of the players on the field, only Mark Percival (128m) and, inevitably, Matt Dufty (197m) managed higher figures.

Defensively too, he was a big part of a right edge that was stretched by Matty Nicholson’s sin-binning, making 23 tackles and missing just two.