Resilience pleases Smith

Sandercock laments leaky late defence

Last updated: 26th February 2012   Subscribe to RSS Feed

Resilience pleases Smith

Tony Smith: Happy with his table-topping side

Related links

Teams

Also see

Warrington coach Tony Smith praised his side's defensive efforts as they returned to the top of the Stobart Super League with a 42-10 victory over Hull KR.

The Wolves built up an 18-0 interval lead and although Rovers hit back with two second-half tries, the Wolves finished with a flourish to run out comfortable winners.

Smith said: "In the first half our defence was unbelievable. To give them so much ball on our try line it was remarkable not to cave in.

"I think we had around 36 tackles in a row on our own line just before half-time and that shows a fair bit of commitment from the team to defend that many back-to-back sets.

"But it does have a price to pay if you have to defend that much and we didn't really control the ball well enough. We had a great start to the game with a couple of spectacular tries and I think we thought we were going to be able to do that all day.

"But we were able to finish off with a few more spectacular tries which we are capable of."

Hull KR coach Craig Sandercock was disappointed his side let the scoreboard get away from them late in the game.

Panic

The Robins conceded three tries in the final six minutes and Sandercock said: "I'm very disappointed with the last three tries that's for sure and obviously (Brett) Hodgson was on with his goalkicking, and that exacerbates the situation.

"We fought back well to 18-10 and I thought we might just sneak home here but at the end there was some very inept defence by us which exacerbated the scoreline.

"It's fair to say we panicked when we had some ball attacking their line and some players who probably should no better threw some passes that weren't on and offloading a fair bit and tending to try and push the pass and lacked the composure needed.

"Warrington have a myriad of international players and we haven't and you need to be at your best and a couple of individuals were slightly down and every single 50-50 call went against us and we had no luck."

Sky Bet Odds:

Click Here for Your Free Bet