Saint Helens all but sealed their top-four place tonight with a 31-10 over league leaders and last week's Cup winners Hull FC.

That leaves them seven points ahead of sixth-placed Castleford, who beat local rivals Wakefield 36-22 this evening, with just six points to play for for both teams.

Fifth placed Catalans are six points behind and play Warrington in Perpignan tomorrow. A home win would see the Dragons still mathematically capable of matching Saints' total: but that would need Saints to lose their three remaining games and Catalans to win theirs.

A Wire win, though, will see the top four, and play-off semi-finalists, decided with three rounds of Super 8 ties still to go.

Hull arrived on Merseyside with a depleted squad after last week's bruising Wembley affair: but it was they who got the scoring under way when Mahe Fonua crossed the line after just four minutes for a 6-0 lead.

For much of the first half, at least, the Black and Whites belied the effect of last week's efforts and made a game of it – even without the liked of Sneyd, Ellis, Minichiello, Yeaman, Houghton Taylor and Tuimavave.

It was another quarter of an hour before winger Jack Owens crossed the whitewash to reduce Hull's lead to 6-4.

But Matty Fleming's 25th-minute score, converted by Owens, was enough for the home side to go into the changing rooms at the hooter with a 10-6 half-time lead.

It stayed pretty tight in the first period after the hooter as well.

It took 10 minutes of the second half before Atelea Vea troubled the scorer for Saints, converted by Owens, on 41 minutes but that was soon followed by Sika Manu's unconverted try to keep the visitors within touching distance.

But that was to be Hull's final score.

Owens kicked a penalty around just before the 60th minute, and the last 10 minutes of the game was one-way traffic by St Helens.

Two quick tries by Owens and Vea, both converted by the winger for a personal haul of 18 points, bracketed a drop goal by Jordan Turner to send  most of the 10,000-plus crowd happy in the knowledge that they are near certain to be watching semi-final football at the end of this month.