‘Player revolt’ comments did not come from within the dressing room, says Chester

Chris Chester says the comments of a player revolt at Wakefield did not come from any of the players who featured against Huddersfield on Thursday night.

The Daily Star published a story earlier this week in which an anonymous individual, believed to be a Trinity squad member, claimed the players were threatening to walk out if Chester wasn’t sacked as head coach.

However, there were no signs of a dispute among the 17 players and their head coach last night as they produced a gutsy display to beat Huddersfield 18-14 at the Totally Wicked Stadium.

Speaking after the match, Chester said: “Those comments kind of galvanised us tonight.

“Over the last 24 hours, we know that those kind of comments have not come from within the dressing room.

“I just got them all there at the end of the game and I could not be more proud of how they have stuck together over the last 10-12 weeks.

“It has not been good enough and one win does not relieve anything. It just gives us something to work with.”

The victory was Wakefield’s first in 10 matches, ending one of the toughest periods in the job since Chester took charge in 2016.

As with most of this season, Trinity made life tough for themselves and could be forgiven for thinking it wasn’t going to be their night when Ben Jones-Bishop’s late try was harshly disallowed by the video referee.

However, they were able to cross again late on through Tom Johnstone and Chester was full of praise for his team’s determination in what was only their third win of the season.

“I thought we started the game really strong and tough,” said Chester. “We had that never say die attitude towards the back end and I thought we were unlucky with the try going against us.

“The guys did not let it affect them, even though they went in at half-time behind on the score board with the amount of field position and territory we had.

“But credit to Huddersfield, they threw some shape at us that we could not quite defend in that first half. Thankfully, we got it right in the second half.

“As for the winning try, the way he dislodged possession, Jacob Miller does that quite regularly.

“I thought the try before, when it went up to the video referee, was a little bit unlucky.

“We are probably talking eight or nine metres away but I just thought at that point, we needed to come up with something special and Jacob did that and Tom got the try.”