Tributes and Tears for Sculthorpe, Man of Fractured Steel

In the tough world of rugby league, a sport where collisions are so teeth-rattlingly frequent that players might be advised to wear air-bags beneath their shirts, there is often little room for sentiment. But even a Hull supporter would have needed a stony heart not to feel sorry for Paul Sculthorpe as he sidestepped a group of reporters in the bowels of Wembley on Saturday night and headed for the team coach.

The great man now has four Challenge Cup winners' medals but perhaps no Wembley award since Don Fox won the Lance Todd Trophy here 40 years ago has been less celebrated. Fox, whose death last month was commemorated with a minute's silence, is harshly remembered for fluffing the kick that deprived Wakefield Trinity of a final victory in 1968. Receiving the man-of-the-match award was no consolation for Fox, and Sculthorpe was just as inconsolable here.

Minutes before a distraught Sculthorpe made his swift exit - his right arm in a sling after dislocating his shoulder making a tackle in the opening minute - the young Hull centre Tom Briscoe had hobbled away on crutches after injuring his ankle. Briscoe, though, is an 18-year-old center who a few weeks ago was sitting his A-levels in Pontefract. Time is on his side. Sculthorpe is 31 this month and after a decade at Knowsley Road has almost certainly played his last game for Saints.

Sculthorpe's place on the team-sheet at loose forward was worth an award itself given a depressing run of injuries that had begun with major knee surgery and continued with a snapped achilles tendon and a hamstring problem that had dogged him all season. Now a proposed move to Salford City Reds may be in doubt. He may even accept an off-field role at St Helens after the departure of their coach, Daniel Anderson, at the end of the season.

Anderson and Sculthorpe have not had a particularly warm relationship of late but the coach was full of sympathy for the former Great Britain captain. Paul Wellens, the Saints full-back who shared the Lance Todd Trophy last year and won it outright this time, echoed the sentiments of his team-mates. "We felt shattered for him. I didn't even notice that Paul had left the field. The game had hardly started and I looked around and realized what had happened. We will have a beer with him and try to put a smile back on his face but it's very tough."

"The things he's achieved make him second to none," echoed the St Helens prop James Graham, who also challenged for the Lance Todd Trophy through his relentless work. "It would be a terrible shame if it were to end like this."

Sculthorpe's injury apart, this was the most satisfying of St Helens' three back-to-back cup triumphs. Anderson's side had to dig deeper than in the previous two victories, against Huddersfield and Catalans Dragons. Those matches were too straightforward. Hull, ravaged by injury and without recognized half-backs to direct them, made a massive contribution to the game, while their supporters helped make it a magnificent spectacle.

The massed ranks of black and white at one end heralded Hull's second-half fightback thanks to two tries from Kirk Yeaman. The Hull forwards were uncompromising, none more so than Garreth Carvell, who recently signed a three-year contract after St Helens tried to tempt him.

"They gave us as tough a game as any we've had all season," added Wellens, a nasty cut above his right eye reinforcing that view. "The heat and intensity really took its toll in the second half. In the end our mental toughness got us through."

St Helens may not be universally popular and they have some way to go before they can match the dominance of the Wigan side of the late 80s and early 90s but even without their one-time Man of the Steel this is a copper-bottomed side.