Wakefield Trinity boss slams ‘appalling’ video technology after Hull FC defeat

Daryl Powell was left to criticise the standard of video technology available as his Wakefield Trinity side were edged out by Hull FC on Friday night.

Trinity were beaten 16-12 by the Black and Whites, with John Cartwright’s side scoring three tries in West Yorkshire to claim their third league win of the season. However, it could very different had Wakefield not had three tries chalked off by the video referee.

Josh Rourke, Tom Johnstone and Mason Lino were all denied tries, with the latter two being deemed to be offside, while Lino’s effort was pulled back for an obstruction on Jordan Lane. Powell believes that only two of those were ruled out correctly and he says Hull’s first try through Herman Ese’ese was suspect, too, with the prop forward fumbling the ball before gathering it to touch down in the first half.

To make matters worse, the game was played without a match clock due to technology issues, making it hard for both head coaches to manage the contest.

“The technology is appalling to start with,” Powell said after the game. “I just think ‘what are we doing?’

“Josh is offside, Jordan Lane dives on the floor and there is minimal contact but if a bloke wants to dive on the floor he can, can’t he. I could see why that was disallowed.

“The Tom Johnstone one they’re saying he’s onside on that but the technology is that bad you wouldn’t know anyway. There you go, there’s not a lot you can do about it.

“The amount of cameras that you have, you can’t see whether people are onside or not. It looked like Ese’ese had lost the ball into Hoody. It all went against us tonight.

“I’m not complaining, we’ve done too much to ourselves but there’s some poor performances out there and we had a number of them and there’s a lot of other things that were poor. I have no complaints about us getting beat tonight because we can’t do that much wrong and expect to win the game.”

The defeat was their third on home soil with all four of the West Yorkshire side’s Super League points coming on the road and Powell says his side must tidy things up moving into a key period of the season.

“Really disappointed obviously,” the Wakefield Trinity head coach added. “I think we started so well and then I just through we hurt ourselves way too much. We was talking and the boys were saying exactly the same thing as I feel, we’ve just handed them way too much really.

“I think we’ve been unlucky in some instances but we made too many errors and we feel like we’ve handed the game away really. There’s a hell of a lot gone against us tonight from all sorts of angles.

“We’re just talking about learning really and making sure we don’t hurt ourselves as much as we did tonight and then I think we’re on the winning side, it’s pretty close. We definitely feel like it’s a game we’ve given away a little bit.”