TONY Smith refused to label Warrington Wolves’ impressive win over St Helens a ‘defining’ moment in their season.

Wolves stormed to a 41-24 victory at the Etihad Stadium in the Magic Weekend finale, going some way to avenge their defeat to Saints on the opening day of the Super League season.

But Smith knows there is a lot of rugby league still to be played and is not getting carried away by the Round 13 performance.

“It was a good performance,” said Wolves’ head of coaching and rugby. “I don’t think there are defining moments, we have some good days, we have some bad days and today was a good day for us.

“We probably out-enthused our opponents in that first half, which is what they did to us last time they played us.

“We had to step up, there wasn’t a whole lot between us in many respects the last time we played them but you get some momentum and you score some points, blow out some scores and that can easily happen.

“It may well happen to us again this season, but we should be able to compete with a few other teams this season as well – I don’t see it as a defining moment.”

Wolves opened up a 30-point lead in the second half, despite having Gene Ormsby sin-binned, before witnessing a mini Saints comeback, but Smith believes it was a learning curve for his defence.

“It shows even with a lead like that you need to learn how to play when you’ve got a lead, we went a man down and scored a try during that period,” he added.

“We were a bit concerned about them gaining some momentum in that five-minute period in the second half but we need to do some work on our right side defence, it got exposed after half time and we need to patch it up.

“Saints executed it really well and exposed us, so we learned a lot from today, not just for the future but for next week as well.”

That fixture next week sees them face Wakefield, who Smith feels Wolves will have to be on their game to beat.

“Next week will be a new week and we’ll have to come up against a team who have had some good performances in recent weeks,” he continued.

“Today they weren’t so good but they’ll be rebounding – we’ve been solid in the last few week and building in patches, there were some aspects of our game here that we really need to brush up on for next week.”