Willie Poching “not looking too far ahead” in regards to Wakefield job
Interim Wakefield coach Willie Poching says he has had no conversations with the club’s board about taking the job permanently and that he isn’t looking too far ahead.
Poching oversaw his third win from four matches as Wakefield’s interim coach in Monday’s 20-13 derby win over Leeds.
The former New Zealand and Samoa international said he had not spoken to chief executive Michael Carter about becoming permanent head coach, having stepped up from assistant in mid-August following Chris Chester’s sacking.
“That will look after itself in due course, if it is to be,” he said after Monday’s win at Belle Vue.
“I haven’t looked past (Sunday’s game against) Huddersfield. That’s been my approach and I’ll be consistent with that.
“The boys deserve a bit of a rest. The performance has warranted some reward for them.
“I’m not looking too far ahead.”
Trailing 12-6 at half-time, Trinity rallied hard and grabbed a dramatic late victory thanks to a Ryan Hampshire drop-goal and Joe Arundel’s last-gasp converted try.
“It feels pretty good, for many reasons,” Poching said. “It was just nice to win a derby. We lost one a couple of weeks ago and in that we lacked the emotion for 40 minutes that should happen in a derby game.
“Today we showed a lot of spirit and fight from the start. Some of the spirit and belief they’re playing with is really pleasing.
“For me that’s a massive factor. We’re starting to see that consistently. Today was about other people stepping up and not just Joe Westerman.”
Prior was marched in the first half for a high tackle and then in the second after a melee with Trinity’s Chris Green.
Agar has described some officials as “trigger-happy” with giving out yellow cards in recent matches and plans to approach the Rugby Football League to voice his concerns.
“We get sin-bins every week, we’re very quick to get sin-bins,” he said.
“Sin-bins on the back of touch judges who are 40 metres away giving reports. If we look at our sin-binnings this year, on an isolated and on their own merits, I’m just not really sure.
“I think Richie Myler got sin-binned against Salford for nothing. Zane (Tetevano) got sin-binned at Huddersfield for nothing. If they’re sin-bins, we’re going to have a lot of sin-bins.
“We know that we’re going to have to work to very, very high standards at the moment because we are very quick to give penalties away and sin-bins. That’s how it feels from our standpoint.
“We obviously need some clarification because there’s a fair bit of moaning and groaning when it’s happening at the moment. But a lot of it rests with us.
“We’ve got to (manage) that discipline a little bit better but at the same time we’re having to adhere to some unbelievably high standards in that department.”
Agar said he was unsure whether Super League has a widespread problem with officiating or whether his side have been penalised over-zealously.
“I’d like someone to answer me, have we been unfairly hit or is that just a dreadful run of bad luck? Or do all these tackles I’m seeing warrant sin-bins?” he said.
“We have to make the game safe – the game needs to be as safe as it can, but at the same time I think we’ve been very, very trigger-happy with the cards at times.
“I’m looking for some feedback because the bits of feedback that I’ve had is that we have had some guys wrongly sin-binned, but it keeps happening to us. Whether today or not, again, I’ll look for some direction from the guys that make those decisions.”