Daryl Powell has criticised his Wakefield Trinity side for not being smart enough in moments despite picking up an 18-14 win over Leigh Leopards on Friday night.
Wakefield claimed their third win on the spin at Belle Vue on the night, but they didn’t have it all their own way and made life hard for themselves at times against a depleted Leigh outfit.
Jazz Tevaga put the Trin in front, but Gareth O’Brien pulled the Leopards back into the game just before the break by capitalising on a Caius Faatili error. Jayden Myers and Oliver Pratt scored in the second half to take the game away from Leigh after some huffing and puffing from the home side and that was ultimately enough to seal the win.
That’s despite some two late efforts from Josh Charnley and Jacob Alick-Wiencke and ultimately, had Adam Cook had a better night with the boot, Leigh could have done enough to take Wakefield to golden point.
Powell was happy with the two points, of course, but the Wakefield boss was fairly frustrated by elements of his side’s performance.
“I thought there was a lot to like about us last week and a lot less to like about us tonight,” Powell told Sky Sports. “Credit to Leigh they really got after us and I don’t think we handled that well.
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“I don’t think we thought or were smart enough. It took us a while to do that and we bombed a couple of chances.
“There’s loads of improvement in us from tonight but sometimes you don’t play that well but if you get two points, you can be happy with it.”
On the positive of his side’s third win in a row, Powell added: “I think it is, some consistency of winning games. I think consistency of performance was a little bit off tonight but you have to win games and that’s important.
“We’ll get a lot out of tonight, some things that we want to improve and get better at. It’s a journey, a season, and we’re still at the start of it. We want to get a little bit better and we certainly will tonight.
“I thought our discipline in the second half was pretty poor. We gave three penalties and three set restarts away with 33 per cent territory, it’s not a thing of beauty and you’re under pressure on your own line.
“That happened too much to us tonight and we have to cut that out. A little bit of frustrating things that hurt us as a team and some individual bits to fix up.”
