IT’S fair to say that Warrington Wolves head coach Daryl Powell was disappointed at the final hooter as the Cheshire club went down 22-6 to the Leeds Rhinos.
The Wolves were second best from the start as Leeds ran into a 16-0 lead after just 15 minutes before Warrington tried to stage a late comeback.
For Powell, who sat alone in the coaches box for 15 minutes after the hooter had sounded, it’s been a tough ride.
“I’m just disappointed, we wanted to put a better effort out there. I will be thinking about it for the next week and that’s the way coaching is. I thought Leeds got us early and then we get a sinbin,” Powell said live on Sky Sports.
“We never really played to our potential, I thought we battled hard. We started to play after about 73 minutes and we have to find more of that within ourselves. Everything has got to be better.
“How do we help the players? Recruitment wise we are looking, we’ve lost two players and haven’t replaced them. That’s been tough, this is a tough sport and we are in a bit of a rut at the moment.”
Powell had a clear message to his players.
“We have got to work our way out of it, we get some troops back and we will give the team some more support which is needed.
“It takes hard work as well, we are not defending the way we need to defend. It’s hard in the middle of the season because our boys are bashed up. I’m not able to rotate our middle unit. The boys are battling, we have a few players not on top of their game.
“The team needs confidence which is a big one. Winning becomes a habit and we are losing too many games at the moment. We have lost a few games on the spin and that’s not nice. The only way to get out of it is to work hard and keep your mentality in the right place.
“If we play like that we are not beating St Helens so we clearly we need to improve.”