WARRINGTON WOLVES head coach Sam Burgess felt his side failed to recover from the yellow card issued to James Bentley in the first half of their 30-18 loss to Wigan Warriors.
They led 12-0 when Bentley was sent to the sin bin for the accumulation of six-agains.
Wigan scored their opening try through Josh Cartwright while Bentley was in the bin, then crossed for four second half tries through Taylor Kerr, Zach Eckersley, Kian McDermott and Austin Daniel.
“I’m disappointed,” said Burgess. “We definitely came with better energy tonight and came to play, but our execution was off.
“From the sin-binning onwards, we couldn’t get our rhythm again and when we found it for periods, we regained some control.
“We had some big momentum swings against us, particularly at the back end of the second half. It’s a tough loss.
“They’re a champion side full of tough players, and they know how to get the job done. We struggled to execute and we didn’t play our game for long enough.
“Our enthusiasm was there, Wigan’s enthusiasm was there but our execution was off.”
Burgess refused to say his team were complacent and was adamant they were almost there apart from their execution.
“We weren’t complacent,” he added. “We weren’t out-enthused. We just didn’t execute.
“We had a couple of forced passes – Jimmy Harrison went through the line a couple of times and forced the pass.
“We haven’t been doing that. We had a couple of cold drops.
“It’s not complacency but we just didn’t get it right in the moment. That’s the way it’s going at the moment.”
Burgess also refused to get drawn into the decision by video referee Jack Smith to disallow Ewan Irwin’s try with ten minutes to go that would have levelled the game at 24-24.
“You know my thoughts on all that stuff. I’m not getting into it,” he said.
“You all saw it and should report what you see, because I’m fed up of talking about it.