Chester confident of bouncing back

Wakefield head coach Chris Chester is confident his side will bounce back from their narrow opening round defeat against Hull FC on Sunday.

Chester’s side were on course to upset last year’s Challenge Cup winners in awful conditions at Belle Vue, but Jake Connor’s try denied Trinity the points late on.

“I learnt a lot about my players in the match,” said Chester.

“Last year we would have probably lost that game by 20-30-points when they went in front, but we had that grind mentality and we just came up a little bit short.

“I’m happy with the performance and happy with the effort but I’m just disappointed with how the result finished. Fair play to Hull, they played well but we were more than a match for them.”

Having finished in the top eight last season, Wakefield have strengthened well in the off-season but have still been written off by many pundits.

Their next match isn’t until Friday week when they face one of the major under-achievers from last season Huddersfield, a match that should give Chester an idea of where his team are at in 2017.

“Our performance against Hull was pleasing and our completion rate was up around the 75 per cent mark, in them conditions I think we can be happy with those figures.

“We are obviously disappointed that we conceded late on, we just need to be a little bit smarter in the ruck next time out and I think we can cause the opposition a lot of problems.”