TONY Smith felt Warrington Wolves lacked the ‘punch’ that saw them beat Hull KR last Sunday.

Wolves dumped the Robins out of the Challenge Cup in the fourth round, but were beaten 12-25 at the Halliwell Jones Stadium in Super League Round 8.

The head of coaching and rugby believes his side were not too far off last week’s performance, but needed to turn their possession into points early on.

“We had a little bit more punch last week with our attack (last week) we weren’t far off. I thought we built a good solid game the first half and it was a good even contest.

“We probably just needed to take a couple of chances at that stage and convert a bit of our field position.

“We dominated the field position first half, but it was a good hard arm wrestle in that first half. Second half we just didn’t build a game and I can’t fault my guys’ effort, I thought it was terrific, but just a little bit off smarts.”

Trent Waterhouse knocked on in a good position in the first half and Ryan Atkins was hauled down short of the line early on, but Smith refused to be left feeling ‘what if’.

“I’m not sure the defeat at the weekend was enough to motivate the opposition,” he added. “But they handled it pretty well as well, they looked sharp at times.

“It’s ifs and buts, we would have liked to have applied more pressure and converted those into points, but we’re talking hypotheticals, we didn’t and we would have liked to have done that but it was not to be.

“There were some small aspects where we needed to be a little better, I thought there was a marked improvement in certain areas, I thought our defence was a whole lot better than it has been on some of the big plays that our opponents put on us.

“There were some good signs as well, but for that 15 minutes after half time we were off the pace of building there and we needed that 15. 20 minutes to be really solid but we didn’t handle it in that manner.”

Rhys Evans and Stefan Ratchford both saw tries chalked off although Smith said he has not had a chance to look at them, he also felt it was a difficult game for Ben Currie, Ben Harrison, Anthony England and Brad Dwyer to make their returns.

“You want them to go your way and some days they do some days they don’t,” he explained. “That’s sport; we would’ve liked to have had those and a couple more.

“It was tough circumstances for them thrown in at the deep end.”