St Helens boss Paul Rowley has pointed to overconfidence as a possible reason for his side’s downfall and defeat against Warrington Wolves on Friday night in Super League.
Despite losing captain Matty Lees to injury a week before the start of the season, there was plenty of optimism about St Helens and within their camp, something that Rowley has pointed to a possible reason why his side underperformed in their 24-14 loss at the Halliwell Jones Stadium.
Asked to give his thoughts, Rowley claimed that his side simply ‘dipped our toe in the water’ and when explaining why on SaintsTV, he said: “Maybe a little bit of overconfidence. We came in with a spring in our step to be honest. We were really confident but ultimately, I thought Warrington did a really good job.
“They were more aggressive than us. They were a lot quicker around the ruck, the six agains and penalties in the first half accumulated to 8-2, which hurt us and gained them a lot of cheap yardage and field position. They put us to the sword on the back of it.”
St Helens fearing lengthy lay-off for Jack Welsby
Rowley also gave flowers to Warrington’s 19-year-old full-back Cai Taylor-Wray who put in a dominant performance, scoring one and helping to create two more tries.
The teenager ran for a whopping 235 metres and when asked about his efforts, the St Helens boss couldn’t help but offer praise.
“It was his day ultimately and we can only stand here and give that the recognition it deserves,” Rowley said.
“He came off the back of a dominant ruck and with that speed, we got caught out and didn’t handle it as well as we should have done.
“We’ll review it and we’ll kick ourselves because we’re very capable of dealing with it but we didn’t.”
Having confirmed to Sky Sports that full-back Jack Welsby had suffered a dislocated shoulder and was headed to hospital, Rowley gave a hint as to the possible injury timeline by comparing it to Matty Lees, who is expected to miss 10 to 12 weeks.
Such a blow would be massive for Saints, and Rowley admitted as such: “I think that’s going to be in the Matty Lees category so we’ve got a couple of biggies who are missing for the foreseeable but we’ll rise to the challenge.”
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