St Helens to open and close Super League title defence with French double

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Super League champions St Helens will open and close the regular season in 2022 with a French double.

Kristian Woolf’s men will launch their bid for an unprecedented fourth successive Super League title at home to Catalans Dragons in a repeat of the 2021 Grand Final on Thursday, 10 February.

Seven months later, on Saturday, September 3, Saints will welcome promoted Toulouse to the Totally Wicked Stadium for their 27th and final fixture before the play-offs.

Super League has retained the top-six play-off system in use for the last two years and clubs will play four loop fixtures on top of their home and away matches and the Magic Weekend in Newcastle to get to 27 games.

To accommodate an earlier Grand Final - and a bigger lead-in to the rearranged World Cup - on September 24, clubs will double up over the Easter and August Bank Holiday weekends.

However, clubs will take a break for the international weekend on June 18-19 when England are expected to play the Combined Nations All Stars in preparation for the end-of-season World Cup.

Saints’ clash with the Catalans will be the first of seven televised matches in the first two weeks of the season.

It will be followed on Friday, February 11 by Wigan’s trip to Hull KR while the following day Sky Sports will show Toulouse’s first-ever top-flight game against Huddersfield at Stade Ernest-Wallon and Channel 4 will launch their coverage at Headingley, where Leeds take on Warrington in a lunchtime fixture.

The highlight of round two promises to be Castleford’s trip to Warrington on Thursday, February 17, when new Wolves boss Daryl Powell will go up against the home-town club he left in 2021 after eight seasons in charge.

Derby fixtures will provide the highlight of the Easter programme and this time there will be an all-French affair, with Toulouse taking on the Dragons at Stade Gilbert Brutus.

Sky Sports will be in Perpignan on Thursday, April 14, before switching to England for the Good Friday derbies between the two Hull clubs and St Helens versus Wigan.