Mark Applegarth slams “embarrassing” defeat to Wigan Warriors

Last night Wakefield Trinity were sent to the bottom of the early Super League table.

They lost 60-0 against a Wigan Warriors side who came up with the perfect response to their opening round defeat to Hull KR.

It was a concerning defeat for Wakefield after an encouraging performance against Catalans Dragons last week.

They did lose the likes of Reece Lyne and Max Jowitt which meant Lee Gaskell had to play out of position and Samisoni Langi had to play in the halves.

However, Applegarth still slammed the defeat as “embarrassing” and “unacceptable.”

“It was a tough one, I thought in the first-half our lack of bite in defence and Wigan’s clinical edge summed it up,” he said to BBC West Yorkshire Sport.

“34-0 at half-time, is just unacceptable from us as a team. It was a mixture of Wigan being outstanding and us not having that bite about us.”

He did say that he takes full responsibility for the loss:

“I thought we rolled far too easily and our defence was a mile off. It’s something I will get to the bottom of. It is not acceptable for a team at this level and as Head Coach, I take full responsibility for that.

“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 from 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.”