WAKEFIELD TRINITY went down to the Wigan Warriors, 60-0, last night at the DW Stadium.
After defeat in round one at home to the Catalans Dragons, Wakefield head coach Mark Applegarth was keen to see a response – but not the one that he did receive on Friday night.
Now, Applegarth has labelled the thrashing “unacceptable” and “embarrassing”
“It was a tough one, I thought in the first-half our lack of bite in defence and Wigan’s clinicalness summed it up,” Applegarth told BBC Radio Leeds.
“34-0 at half-time, it’s unacceptable from us as a team. It was a mixture of Wigan being outstanding and us not having that bite about us.
“I thought we rolled far too easily and our defence application was a mile off. It’s something I will get to the bottom of. It’s not acceptable for a team at this level and as head coach, I take full responsibility for that.”
Down 34-0 at the break, Applegarth explained that a response was needed but a knock on in the first set, set the tone for the rest of the 80 minutes.
“You need a response, you can say whatever you like sometimes but no one will get yourselves out of those holes apart from yourselves. 34-0 at half-time wasn’t good enough.
“I thought it got scrappy off both teams, Wigan were trying things and came up with a lot more errors in the second-half.
“We knocked on in that first set. I don’t want to say something I’ll regret which is not what we want to be about at Wakefield Trinity.
“From our point of view we’ve got a lot of work to do. It’s not acceptable, it’s embarrassing.”
