WALKING away from Old Trafford the other week - cursing the Manchester rain, the length of the tram queue and most of all the defeat - a small part of my brain contemplated how less heartbreaking rugby league would be if it modelled itself on the old school professional wrestling.

Remember the tag team bouts where Big Daddy would watch from the corner post while his weakling partner gets marmalised by Giant Haystacks and Kojak Kirk?

The crowd would be on tenterhooks until Big Daddy was eventually tagged into the ring where he would promptly scatter the bullies with his belly. Game over.

The good guys always seemed to win the wrestling. If only the same was true in Super League ….but of course that would be pretty boring. No disrespect to champions Leeds, but if there had been any justice or rewards for perseverance in the face of the multitude of obstacles that were tossed in their way in 2011, then Saints would have been running around the Theatre of Dreams with that ugly lump of metal that suddenly transforms itself into a gleaming object of beauty when your team is crowned champions.

Instead it was a depressingly familiar story – with the same ending to the previous four finals but if anything this was even more painful.

On the heartbreak-ometer this year’s Grand Final defeat by Leeds was a sickener, which, although not on the scale of Wembley 1987, was very close to the 1990 semi-final loss and much worse than Murrayfield 2002.

It shouldn’t have been really. Even getting to the showpiece again was supposed to be a bonus as this year Saints were expected to press their noses up against the Old Trafford windows as the two so called Big Ws fought out their dream final with their lavishly recruited teams of contrasting styles. After overcoming the year long adversity of playing at Widnes, Kylegate and too many injuries to mention - Saints gate-crashed that party with two storming semi-final wins over the reigning champs Wigan. The expectation and optimism grew the week before and it fairly ballooned in the Stretford End when Saints took a two score lead with 20 minutes to play.

But after coping with the above mentioned burdens since February, the rugby gods decided to add a couple of more weights to the load and so when Paul Wellens and Michael Shenton left the field injured in the second half those same gods were no doubt shouting ‘Buckaroo’. Royce Simmons has already begun picking up the pieces with a prescription of more hard work, fresh faces and new ideas. 2011 was always going to be a tough year.

The double-whammy of losing their talismanic skipper Keiron Cunningham and seeing Knowsley Road razed to the ground symbolised that challenge. Cunningham, who had been the central figure in each and every one of the club’s successes since the switch to summer in 1996, was always going to leave big boots to fill when he retired.

Although his successor James Roby needed a number nine jersey a few sizes smaller, he stepped up to the plate with some massive performances that scotched two myths; that the dummy half role needed to be a job share and that the former Blackbrook Royal was best used off the bench as an impact player.

Despite getting more physical attention this year, resulting in him sporting a black eye and cut head every other week and sustaining a fractured eye socket, Roby only missed one game – the last one of the regular season. No wonder he made the shortlist of three for the Man of Steel awards where he was pipped by Rangi Chase.

Some of the potential negatives surrounding demolition of Knowsley Road were softened and turned into positives by the fast-paced construction of Saints’ new ground over at Peasley Cross on the fringes of the town centre. It symbolised a sort of rebirth for the club, dovetailing with what was happening on the pitch with the development of the youngsters, and giving the fans concrete evidence of what they could look forward to as they made their fortnightly trip to the club’s temporary lodgings at Widnes’ Stobart Stadium.

Situated on the other side of Sutton Manor, Widnes is probably more of a traipse than a trek but it was still too awkward or costly for 3,000 or so supporters who dropped off this term. Given the difficulties and cost of that extra eight-miles each way journey at the end of a working day, the fact that an average 7,000 fans (more than watched the team during the Meninga season at Knowsley Road) made the effort is a positive.

There were a few problems with Widnes though – and as neat and tidy as the ground is, our fans never really warmed to it. Saints got off to a bad start there losing their first two games and a friendly at their temporary abode.

Maybe it was unfortunate that the fixture planners threw up Warrington – a team closer to Widnes and with a good record at the Stobart Stadium – for Saints’ first home game.

And when Warrington came out on top, for the first time in ten years, a few alarm bells started ringing. A fortnight later the discontent in bar rooms, front rooms, chatrooms and terraces reached its peak with a second successive home loss – this time to unfancied Harlequins. The Quins game represented something of a perfect storm – a small crowd, no away fans or atmosphere, a poor performance and to cap it all Kyle Eastmond’s first home game since the announcement was made that he was joining Bath – all coming together simultaneously to create quite an ugly mood. Eastmond produced a poor effort that night, was booed off and responded with a gesture for which he was disciplined by the club and barracked at subsequent academy games.

The story had the potential to become a running sore at the club had it not been dealt with so well by the management and coaching staff. Although the young scrum half managed to rehabilitate himself over the course of the year, we saw nothing of his old sparkle that had made him such hot property.

On the playing front, 2011 was a year that did not really happen for Eastmond. On his day Eastmond could provide that spark of brilliance and that electric burst that could generate gasps from the crowd and tries from nothing – alas there was none of that this year and Saints were poorer for not having a real, something from nothing, game breaker in their team.

But every cloud has a silver lining – and that was provided by the emergence of the Lomaskell phenomenon which helped overcome the absences of Eastmond and his half back partner Leon Pryce, who missed the best part of the season with a groin injury.

Jonny Lomax and Lee Gaskell were first paired together in the fine away win at Leeds in March and the duo never looked back, with the former being called into the senior England squad and winning the Super League Young Player of the Year award at the Man of Steel dinner.

That victory was the springboard to some hugely improved displays – and ones that showed some character too in the face of a dreadful injury curse that struck in the late spring.

It was not just Pryce that was sidelined for long periods. New signing Josh Perry, who was expected to provide some grunt and aggression to the Saints front row, missed the start of the campaign after breaking his foot in his last game for Manly, never had the run of games to get himself fit and then suffered another injury that prematurely terminated his season.

Bigger things will be expected of Perry next term. Industrious big men Paul Clough and then Sean Magennis were also ruled out for large chunks of the year, meaning the burden as ever fell upon the broad shoulders of skipper James Graham. Graham juggled the captaincy, his heavy workload and the speculation around his eventual departure to NRL giants Canterbury Bulldogs in an admirable way, with the flame-haired from rower’s indomitable displays leading by example.

The injury curse struck all sectors of the side – halves, front row and outside backs. Ade Gardner’s Achilles injury, picked up at the end of May, was a big blow. The Cumbrian, who is enjoying his testimonial year, showed a huge improvement in the opening four months of the campaign after being overlooked by Mick Potter in the previous year’s Grand Final. Gardner grabbed eight tries, but his worth was seen more in the quick yards that he made clearing the line.

As keen as Jamie Foster and Tommy Makinson are, it was an aspect of play that the two young wings found hard to replicate but they matured with each game. Shenton, whose defence was first class at the start of the year and was brought more into attacking play once Lomax started operating more effectively on the right hand side. Statistics will show saints lost their fifth Grand Final in a row and their third Challenge Cup semi-final on the spin, leaving them without a pot for three years – the longest they have gone without needing a silver polisher since the early 90s. But another statistic gives a healthier prognosis – Saints were top of the home grown chart for the fifth year in a row.

This term 67 per cent of the playing squad – 11 players out of the match day 17 – were brought up through the club ranks. That stat is head and shoulders above the club’s main rivals.

It means that the club will be going into their bright, spanking new stadium full of optimism and with a team that, with the odd augmentation from Down Under and a couple of naturalised Tykes, will have ‘Made in St Helens’ branded across their chests.