Report: Warrington 30-6 Wakefield

The Wire returned to winning ways last night with a comfortable 30-6 win over an injury-ravaged Wakefield Trinity side in a game ridden with errors and poor officiating.
As expected, Daryl Clark and Joe Philbin were back in the team after being rested last time out, with Ben Murdoch-Masila dropping to the bench and Jack Hughes reverted back to his regular position in the second row. Jack Johnson kept his place out wide, meaning there was no return for Ryan Atkins. Wakefield welcomed back their main man David Fifita, who started alongside Pauli Pauli in one of the strongest second rows imaginable. Chris Chester definitely went big with his team selection, with Jordy Crowther starting at hooker ahead of the more mobile and athletic Kyle Wood.

Early on, Chester's selection of his powerful forwards paid off, and Wakefield were in front with just a minute on the clock when Fifita easily got through a shocking attempted tackle from Chris Hill, before finding Ryan Hampshire on his inside for an easy try, one which was gifted to the West Yorkshire side by some flimsy defence. Danny Brough had no trouble converting the try from in front of the posts, giving Wakefield a 0-6 lead. This set the tone for the early exchanges with Trinity's forwards dominating, and Warrington looking very suspect defensively. After seeing through a few attacks, Wire got themselves on the attack with a good run from Jake Mamo, and looked to have scored in the corner with Josh Charnley but for a brilliant tackle from Jack Croft. More feeble tackling efforts allowed Pauli to burst through a gap but fortunately he didn't get far enough to trouble the line. Wire's line speed wasn't up to scratch but Wakefield were repeatedly offside yet referee Liam Moore, in all of his wisdom, was opting not to impose this particular rule. Moore continued his good work by failing to put his hand up to indicate the fifth tackle, resulting in Daryl Clark running for the line from dummy half rather than finding Blake Austin or Declan Patton.

Finally, Wire were on the board after 18 minutes. A good break from Mamo facilitated a run and offload from Toby King, which allowed Josh Charnley to race for the line. He was held short, but on the next play Patton's neat grubber kick was touched down by the onrushing Ben Currie, for his fourth try of the season. Patton levelled the scores at 6-6 with a comfortable conversion. The referee somehow didn't penalise a tackle on Mamo that was higher than a Conservative Party Function, but a second score was soon to come for the primrose and blue. Austin was struggling to complete tackles early on, but made a good ankle tackle on Pauli to halt his run, and it was the stand off who assisted Wire's second try of the evening. Austin's high kick on the fifth tackle was fumbled by Mason Caton-Brown, allowing Charnley to touch down with ease, scoring for the third game in a row, and bagging his 200th Super League career try. Patton couldn't convert from the corner, meaning it was a 10-6 lead, which should've been extended when Mamo played Clark in, but the hooker made a highly uncharacteristic error and knocked on. 

Mamo was at the centre of everything and looked to have found Jack Johnson in space out wide, but the ball flew into touch. Just before the break, the Wire lead was strengthened. Murdoch-Masila entered the fray and immediately earned a penalty, which got Steve Price's side well up field. From the penalty, the ball was worked central to Patton, and the scrum half played a lovely delayed ball to Mike Cooper, who got to the line and touched down despite the close attention of Hampshire. Patton followed up his assist with an easy conversion, and the score was 16-6 at the end of a first-half that saw Wire respond well to the early setback with three nice tries and a ten point lead.

Austin finally came to the party with a delightful try of his own just after the restart. Toby King found the number six, who then jinked and sidestepped his way to the line, a delicious piece of footwork to score his 19th try in Warrington colours. Another simple Patton conversion made it 22-6. A bizarre period of play followed. Mamo clearly knocked on on his own line, but Liam Moore didn't penalise this, and Daryl Clark was then through, though when the ball came to substitute Sitaleki Akauola, he ended up knocking on himself, and this time it was punished, in another outstanding exhibition of Super League refereeing. Jason Clark then intercepted a Wakefield ball in the Wire half and sent Bryson Goodwin running free. Goodwin had Mamo on his outside but elected to kick the ball through for Mamo to chase, a decision which caused outrage among the Halliwell Jones faithful as the kick was far too heavy and went dead, though it was rendered irrelevant when the referee then blew for offside against Jason Clark in the initial interception. Goodwin then looked to have bagged a try of his own when Austin sent him through, yet Liam Moore stopped the game for obstruction against Currie, another hopeless call.

The errors in the second period continued when Chris Hill looked a cert to score, but spilled the ball on the try line, before Charnley then took his turn to knock the ball on with the line at his mercy. Akauola, who had a mixed stint, won a penalty when the ball was stolen from him. The crowd shouted for two and that is exactly what they got, Patton taking the two points on offer and stretching the lead to 18 points with a quarter of an hour to go. Excellent defence from the left edge forced a drop-out from Wakefield, which was taken short and batted out of play by Ben Jones-Bishop, though the touch judge incredibly ruled that it had come off Goodwin and awarded a Wakefield scrum, easily the worst decision of the night - and that's saying something. Wire finished well with a gorgeous looping pass from Jake Mamo out to young Jack Johnson, who touched down for his first try of 2019 right on the hooter. Patton kicked his best conversion of the night, to round off a 30-6 victory.

This was a poor game in terms of quality throughout, with a lot of mistakes from both sides, though a phenomenally bad refereeing display meant that the game was stop-start and lacked flow - the number of scrums was bordering on the downright ridiculous. There were excellent performances from Daryl Clark, Mike Cooper and Jake Mamo, while Ben Murdoch-Masila, Ben Currie and Declan Patton put in their best shifts in a while. Blake Austin had a quieter game but still popped up with a beautiful try, while Toby King and Josh Charnley were impressive too. Defensively this was a sound display, though the errors will need to be cut out ahead of the visit of St Helens to the HJ next Friday night. Pleasingly, the discipline was very good in this game, conceding just three penalties, and considering how much of an issue this has been in 2019, that is a big improvement.

Next week should be a good event, it is being well promoted and I'm sure it'll be a sell-out, and while I don't expect us to win, my hope is that we can put in a performance that we can take heart and credit from as the business end of both competitions approaches. Interestingly, Saints lost Mark Percival and Zeb Taia to injury in their win over relegation fodder Leeds Rhinos, who can at least take some comfort from the fact that they will have the best stadium in the Championship next year. 

We had to win this game going into Saints and that's exactly what we did. It wasn't pretty, it was bitty, but it was a big two points. And on we go to next week...

It's always our year.

Daniel (@aloosewire)