The stand out moment for Warrington – and it wasn’t a try they scored
Photo by Mark Cosgrove/News Images
Warrington sit proudly at the top of the Super League table with six wins from six.
It’s perhaps too early to say whether it will be “their year”, but one thing is for sure, they will be in the reckoning when it comes to silverware in 2023.
Their latest win, 38-0 over Castleford on Friday night, was ominous for a number of reasons.
They barely had to get out of second gear against a poor Tigers outift, and still won at a canter.
And they were still without banned NRL recruit Josh McGuire, while Peter Mata’utia had to stand in at half-back in the absence of regular number seven Josh Drinkwater.
The balance of their squad has been hailed by chief executive Karl Fitzpatrick in recent weeks.
But it was the team spirit that coach Daryl Powell was keen to highlight following their latest victory.
The moment that best displayed it came when a gang of Warrington defenders managed to take Castleford winger Jason Qareqare in to touch. It came in the second half when the game was long gone, and Castleford had moved the ball wide on the first tackle.
Powell said: “That was the stand out moment for me. You see the way that everyone celebrates it. There are stragglers on the other side of the field, but everyone went over to pat their team mates on the back.
Bouncing in the Jungle 🥁🎶 pic.twitter.com/LvZMOd2G0B
— Warrington Wolves (@WarringtonRLFC) March 24, 2023
“You see people in the background giving each other high fives. It’s a pretty good picture of the team spirit we’re building.
“The players are really committed to keeping the try line in tact.
“We’ve got targets we want to achieve and we’ve set a great platform to achieve our defensive goals in this block of fixtures.”
An acid test
Castleford barely had a look at the Warrington line in the second half, but even at the death when they chanced their arm, the Wolves commitment in keeping a clean sheet was evident.
Matty Ashton came up with a big play late on to deny Bureta Faraimo, while earlier in the match, Warrington kept the hosts out when Matt Dufty won a foot race to deny Qareqare from Paul McShane’s kick.
The Wolves welcome Hull FC next week before a tough trio of games against Catalans, St Helens and Wigan that will really test their trophy credentials, just months after they finished second bottom in Super League.
Powell added: “The challenge when you’re winning consecutively is that no one goes the whole season unbeaten. So you’re looking for where your loss does come, how you can best manage it.
“You want to stretch the run for as long as you can, but we need to make sure that when it does happen, we can manage that and make sure you’re not losing consecutive games.
“It’s going to be an acid test of where we’re at.”