Sam Burgess delivers damning Warrington verdict after horrific loss

Warrington Wolves coach Sam Burgess admits his side lacked the ‘fundamentals’ and were ‘pretty poor’ in a damning assessment of the Wire’s loss to Wakefield.

After a heroic victory over Leigh in last Sunday’s Challenge Cup semi-finals, Warrington were brought back down to Earth with a bump in Super League.

They missed the chance to go into the play-off places after being hammered 40-10 by Wakefield, in a scoreline which fairly reflected the dominance Trinity enjoyed.

Only a brief purple patch to reduce an 18-0 deficit to 18-10 at half-time was a moment of note to speak of for the Wire, and Burgess couldn’t hide his disappointment post-match.

He said: “I was disappointed. That’s nothing like us last week. We’ve got a few guys pretty disappointed and rightly so. But we’ve got to get our work done, we’ve got Hull KR on Friday so there’s not too long to be upset about it.”

When asked if there was a hangover from last weekend, Burgess said: “I’d agree with the point, you can see we looked flat. We’re thin on numbers too, the guys have been playing pretty tough in the last four or five weeks and at some point it was going to catch up with us. It was pretty poor today.

“I’m trying to focus on what we’ve got and who we are. Tonight, we just missed some important fundamentals. We were poor with the ball and physically we lost the contest.”

In contrast, Trinity coach Daryl Powell showered praise upon his side after they moved into the play-off places with a wonderful home performance.

He said: “I thought we were excellent. There was a two-minute period where we lost what we were doing but it was an outstanding performance. We’ve got a lot of players missing but it doesn’t matter who we put out, they’re class, the boys.”

READ NEXT: 1895 Cup final confirmed as Championship heavyweights book Wembley spots