Pressure piles on Warrington Wolves after sixth straight defeat at lowly Wakefield

DARYL Powell’s future as Warrington Wolves coach hangs in the balance after a humiliating 42-6 defeat at basement boys Wakefield.

Trinity had only won three games all season but made light work of Warrington, scoring seven tries to condemn the Wolves to a sixth straight defeat.

That piles further pressure on coach Powell, with increasing calls for the club to part ways with the former Castleford boss.

It was an afternoon to forget from start to finish, as Trinity posted a 22-0 half time lead despite Warrington welcoming back several regulars, including George Williams and Matty Ashton.

Innes Senior scored a first half hat-trick and former New Zealand international Kevin Proctor scored his first Wakefield try to leave Warrington shellshocked, and they were booed off at the break.

Although Paul Vaughan barged his way over to get the Wolves on the board seven minutes in to the second half, it proved a mere blip in the Wakefield procession.

Former Warrington winger Tom Lineham scored an acrobatic try in the corner and Liam Hood darted over moments later to end any faint hope of it being a contest.

Senior added a fourth and Max Jowitt added icing on the cake to bring Wakefield level on points with Castleford in the relegation battle.

Such was the size of the defeat, that Warrington slip to sixth in the table having had a 22 points difference advantage over Hull KR before kick off.

They are perhaps fortunate that Salford’s form has tailed off of late, which means they still have a two point cushion in the play-off places, though the chasing pack of Leeds, Hull and Huddersfield are lurking.

In his post match press conference an animated Head Coach Daryl Powell said: “I’ve no excuses for that today. I thought it was shocking and I’m really disappointed with what I’ve seen.
“The players got a week off in their spare week and we trained really well, but that performance is nowhere near the standard we’d want to be at.
“The resilience in the team is pretty poor at the moment.
He added:”I spoke about resilience early in the week with the team because that’s one of our main issues. As soon as we get smacked on the nose, we’re leaking a lot of blood.
“If you’re talking about effort, some players need to look at themselves pretty long and hard.
“There’s some things that need to change within the team – we’ve lost six games straight now which is ridiculous.
“We probably should have beaten St Helens but apart from that, we’ve deserved to be beaten in all of those games.
“We got beat at everything on the field today and the scoreboard told its own story. We’ve gone from being an excellent team to a team that doesn’t look like a team at the moment.
“That’s where we’ve got to have ownership from individual players to pull this together.
“There’s a couple of things I was asked to do when I first came in – create accountability and get rid of the sense of entitlement. Trying to do those things was a large part of what happened last year but this year has been coloured by that.
Powell went on to say: “This is the job I always wanted but I always felt there were strong things that needed to be sorted out within the club and squad.
“Up to this point, clearly that hasn’t been sorted.
“As a player, I was always a winner and I’ve always been a winner as a coach and that will never stop, so this hurts pretty deeply.”

Wakefield: Jowitt, Lineham, Lyne, Langi, Senior, Lino, Gale, Bowden, Hood, Proctor, Pitts, Ashurst, Atoni. Subs: Eseh, Battye, Bowes, Fifita. (Croft)

Warrington Wolves: Dufty, Thewlis, Mata’utia, Ratchford, Ashton, Williams, Drinkwater, Bullock, Clark, Vaughan, Currie, Nicholson, Philbin. Subs: Kasiano, Walker, Dudson, Holroyd (Minikin)

Oxford English Dictionary. @WarringtonRLFC

🅲🆁🅸🆂🅸🆂
𝐚𝐧 𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐟𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐚 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠. pic.twitter.com/24nc5Pxxi9

— What would Brian Bevan say? 🇺🇦🎙🎧 (@WhatBevan) July 30, 2023

That’s 4️⃣ for @WTrinityRL @InnesSenior 💜#SLWakWar pic.twitter.com/tQV9TXsnue

— Betfred Super League (@SuperLeague) July 30, 2023

An acrobatic finish from @WTrinityRL 🤸‍♀️#SLWakWar pic.twitter.com/Rp2fHHhtQ8

— Betfred Super League (@SuperLeague) July 30, 2023

Paul Vaughan powers through for @WarringtonRLFC 💪#SLWakWar pic.twitter.com/RlzCXHUtyX

— Betfred Super League (@SuperLeague) July 30, 2023