THE SNATCH WAS ON FOR WOLVES! (From Warrington Guardian)

THE SNATCH WAS ON FOR WOLVES!

THERE was a sense of relief from the Wigan Warriors camp when the final hooter sounded to their Super League game with Warrington Wolves.

The champions had done just enough to win the points after surviving a second half scare from a much improved Wolves side.

Their players were dropping like flies through injuries and after using up all their substitutions they had to play the last five minutes with only 12 men.

Coach John Monie said: "I said that if we could restrict Warrington to two tries then I would be happy and that was what we did.

"But I never believed our 18-0 lead at half-time would be enough, specially against Warrington.

"Since I have been coaching over here there has never been an easy game against Warrington. They made a few errors which helped us but they're a good side."

Wolves boss Darryl Van de Velde was disappointed with the first half performance by the Wolves.

He said: "We had spoken about Wigan's dummy half running earlier in the week so it was disappointing that the first two tries they scored came from acting half back.

"We didn't control the ball well in the first half and you can't give Wigan that much ball and not expect to pay the penalty.

"There was no belief. We were just in awe of the first 30 minutes. We knew what they were going to do, we'd talked about it, but we just didn't combat it.

"At half-time I told the players no matter what happens in the second half there was another 40 minutes for them to show some pride in their own individual performances.

"I said if we worked hard then we could turn it round. And in the second half I thought we came back well and I have to give the players a bit of credit in the second half which I thought was good.

"It came back to 18-10 and I thought it was on. Teams don't generally come back from 18-0 down at Wigan but I thought we could come back and snatch it.

"If we had finished off the move in the second half where we ran the ball on the last tackle and Farrar was tackled off the ball then we could have been back in the game with a chance of turning it around.

"But I've got to give Wigan credit as they hung in there.

"This was a big test for us. But now the problem is when the likes of Danny Nutley pick up injuries like he has done we don't have a lot of depth to our squad."

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.