Following their derby day defeat to Hull KR, Hull FC boss John Cartwright has given his verdict of what went wrong.
Two late tries from KR’s Joe Burgess saw the Robins earn a 24-6 victory over their nearest rivals, in what was the first of three meetings between the sides this season.
The Black and Whites started the game poorly, with countless errors and penalties conceded allowing KR easy metres and field position.
Providing his post-match thoughts to Sky Sports, the FC boss agreed that the opening 40 was where his side lost the game, despite the deficit at the break being just four points.
“At the end of the day, we were just poor in the first half with that wind at our back,” he revealed. “Our discipline I think was six penalties [conceded], a couple of ‘six agains’, errors.
“They’re the world champions, and we had to be near our best. I was really happy with how they fought, they fought hard.
“If we get that [Lewis Martin] try over in the corner, we’re at 10-10 chance to go 12-10 with a bit of momentum. Like I said, we gifted them some sort of field position. They’re a very good team and just too much in the end.”
Martin was denied a try controversially in the second half, a decision pundit Jon Wilkin labelled “outrageous”.
Another key factor in the game was FC losing two key forwards, one of which was star man John Asiata.
“Losing ‘Johnny’ was a big one. We lost Joe Batchelor in the first sort of 15-20 minutes.
“Those things you’ve got to deal with on a week-to-week basis but just the core of where you build your game, we just weren’t there, we were poor. We gave [away] penalties and errors cost us heavily.”
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