Smith frustrated by missed opportunities

Tony Smith was pleased with Warrington’s effort against Wigan in the Challenge Cup on Saturday, but he believes his team missed a golden opportunity to progress to the last four.

Wire pushed the Warriors all the way before eventually going down 27-26 and Smith admitted he was fustrated at the outcome.

“I’m sure it was a fantastic match for the neutral – there wasn’t much between us I didn’t think,” said Smith.

“They’d invite us into the game and then we’d invite them back in. We can’t blame anyone but ourselves at the end of it but in terms of effort, character, fight and spirit there was plenty of it from my boys. I thought there was from both sides.

“There were opportunities throughout that game for us to take and we didn’t take them, but I thought there was a lot of fight from my boys.

“They were out there swinging and swinging hard right until the end – with an ounce of luck they could have got that one.

“Some things didn’t go our way and we’ve got to be able to handle that, but in terms of effort I thought that was one of our big assets.

“We’ve got to stop some of those little errors – coming out of our own end a couple of times on second play – some of those fundamental errors really can hurt you and hurt us today.

“Wigan were guilty of them as well but we needed to be a bit better. Well done to Wigan.