WILLIE PETERS has defended his halfback Mikey Lewis after the Hull KR star finished the 34-28 defeat to Warrington Wolves in the sin bin.
Lewis made a try-scoring return after serving a four-match ban for two pieces of ill-discipline – a headbutt and a late tackle – in last month’s reverse fixture.
But he was shown the yellow card with ten minutes remaining for catching Ewan Irwin with his foot after the Warrington player kicked the ball.
Wolves coach Sam Burgess afterwards described it as “a bad challenge” and “really dangerous”, adding: “He (Irwin) is very lucky he’s come out of that healthy.”
But Peters, who had challenged Lewis to “stay calm and composed” in his pre-match press conference, offered a different view.
“He did some good things, but he ended up missing the last ten minutes in the sin bin,” said the Hull KR coach.
“I know he’s done some silly things this year but from what I saw there was no malice in the challenge – he was putting pressure on the kicker.”
Peters was disappointed with the defeat and especially the soft manner in which some of the tries were conceded.
“We were brave in large parts but we were dumb in key moments,” he said.
“It is not acceptable that they were able to go straight through us.”
On the opening of the second half, Peters added: “We came up with an error and they scored off the back of it. We could have done things different but we didn’t.
“It’s the tries that have come off the back of that I am disappointed with. We need to understand the moments that we lost and work on how we lost them.
“I thought the game was gone towards the back end. It was a good game of footy for a long period of time but we lost our way a little bit.”