Smith bids farewell at Warrington Wolves with perfect 10

Pictures Eddie Whitham

VIDEO: WARRINGTON Wolves’ boss Tony Smith brought the curtain down on his coaching career at the club with a 10th consecutive win as they finished the middle 8s with a 46-24 victory over newly promoted Hull KR.

It was they end of the era as Smith and numerous first team players including Kurt Gidley, Ashton Sims, Peta Hiku, man-of-the-match Andres Savelio, Brad Dwyer, Kevin Penny and Matty Blythe all bid a fond farewell to the Halliwell Jones.

With Smith’s successor still not named, who ever it is will have a huge re-building job as well as big boots to fill as Smith parted company with the club where he helped land three challenge cup final victories, three grand final appearances and two league leaders shields in a nine year career.

With Hull KR celebrating promotion to Super League via the middle 8s they looked like they were going to spoil the farewell party as they at one stage led 4-18 in a first half encounter, which certainly didn’t have an end of season feel, with several bust ups, a couple of sin binnings and some quality tries.

As it was the Wolves dominated much of the second half and were afforded the luxury of Gidley and then Sims taking over the goal kicking duties, with Gidley having slightly more success than Sims!

After Ben Pomeroy opened the scoring, with Livett missing the conversion from out wide, the Wolves were hit by three converted tries from the Rovers wingers, Will Oakes and Ryan Shaw, who bagged two.

But Warrington hit back before the break with tries from Stefan Ratchford and Brad Dwyer.

Warrington then turned up the heat in the second half, with two tries from man-of-match Andre Savelio, a second try for Pomeroy, Rovers replying with a second try for Oakes.

Peta Hiku and Ben Currie also touched down, as did Harvey Livett late on, to add to his four conversions.

There was also a successful conversion of Currie’s try from Gidley, when he took over kicking duties, to mark his own farewell, while Sims was slightly wid eof the mark!

Warrington: Ratchford; Russell, Livett, Hiku, Pomeroy; Brown, Gidley; Hill, Clark, Sims, Currie, Hughes, Cooper.

Replacements: Dwyer, Jullien, Philbin, Savelio.

Hull KR: Cockayne; Shaw, Marsh, Minns, Oakes; Atkin, Ellis; Jewitt, Lawler, Mulhern, Greenwood, Blair, Kavanagh.

Replacements: Clarkson, Clark, Dockar-Clay, Moss.

Referee: Gareth Hewer (RFL). ATTEN 10,466