After some big comments from former Wigan Warriors boss Shaun Wane in response to his opposite number in the Test Series, former St Helens boss and Tonga coach Kristian Woolf, England claimed the win in the second Test Match to secure a series win over the Tongans.
After the defeat, Kristian Woolf spoke to the media and explained what let his side down with the former Saints boss highlighting discipline and last play options as the key to the defeat.
He said: “Well look at the end of the day there’s two things I think we need to improve. We need to be a little bit more disciplined. We gave away too many penalties, we made too many unforced errors and we didn’t mount enough pressure with our fifth play.
“It was a close game, it’s a very tight game. You think about how they got one try where we just didn’t quite get things right on that left edge and then nailed a brilliant try with a really good kick and a really good put down under enormous pressure.
“If you don’t get those little things that I mentioned before right then that’s what happens at a test match and that’s what we need to learn.”
Speaking more on discipline, Woolf added: “I wouldn’t say that we’re terribly ill disciplined, that’s not the case at all. But England was certainly more disciplined than us and more disciplined with the ball and more disciplined in terms of penalties and we needed to be squeaky clean there.
“Physically I thought there was parts of that game that we won and won really well but we weren’t able to make the most of it because again our discipline wasn’t good enough and nor was our fifth play.”
Of course there has been widespread debate around the comments made by Woolf and his team in response to last week’s defeat with Wane describing them as disrespectful. However, Woolf dismissed this notion saying that he didn’t get a whiff of it.
He said: “I didn’t get a whiff of that. Good on them if they did. There’s no dramas there at all.”
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