Wane - great day for Sam

England full-back stars in Warriors' romp

Last updated: 26th February 2012   Subscribe to RSS Feed

Wane - great day for Sam

Sam Tomkins: 78 tries in 100 Wigan games

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Wigan coach Shaun Wane praised Sam Tomkins after the England full-back celebrated his 100th Warriors appearance with three tries in the 46-4 win at Castleford Tigers.

"We made a big thing of Sam's 100th appearance. We had a presentation and gave him a special jersey for him to keep," said Wane.

"It was a great day for him and I made a big thing of that. He's local kid and I made sure all the players were aware we needed to make it a perfect day for him with a convincing win and we did that.

"A lot of it is natural with Sam and he wants to win at everything, even when we play a game of Aussie touch in training. He's a great kid to have with us."

Wane was pleased with Wigan's overall performance.

"If someone had given me that score before the game I'd have taken it, " he added.

"For 60 minutes we were outstanding. The last 20 minutes we lost a bit of intensity, but overall I am really impressed.

"We scored some great tries again and I thought our defence was pretty good.

"Our ball control in the last quarter of the game was slightly disappointing and we need to improve that if are to be a ruthless team."

It was an emotional game for Castleford in the absence of their head coach Ian Millward, who is on compassionate leave following the sudden death of his 19-year-old son Robbie.

Wane said: "It was sad circumstances and my heart goes out to Ian Millward, but we just prepared to win the game the best way we could and we were here to do a job."

Difficult week

Acting coach Stuart Donlan, who took charge of Castleford, refused to blame a difficult week for their third successive defeat.

"It has been a difficult week but we can't use that as an excuse for not carrying out things we had practised during the week," he said.

"I thought from Thursday onwards when the players came in ready to train they looked pretty switched on and focused.

"I was disappointed with the performance and the players are a little bit frustrated. Things we spoke about during the week we haven't carried out.

"Wigan put us under a lot of pressure and every time we got the ball back it was within out 10 metres line. We had to go 100 metres nearly every set.

"We created some options on the edges but the final pass and execution wasn't great so that is something we can work on this week."

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