TONY Smith had tongue-in-cheek when he concluded his press conference after Wolves ended their season with victory at St Helens last night.

The result, coming on the back of a big win at home against Catalans Dragons the previous week, left The Wire finishing the campaign in sixth place, which in previous years would have seen them enter the play-offs for the right to appear in the championship decider at Old Trafford.

Only the top four do so this year and Smith told reporters: “Is that it? You don’t want me to say anything else, like we could have won it from sixth if they hadn’t changed the rules or any of those sort of things.”

He was pleased to round off the season with a strong display and to send the departing players away with a win, which was sealed by Roy Asotasi’s 77th-minute score and rubber-stamped by Kevin Penny’s interception with the last play of the game.

“Good performance, really pleased,” he said.

“It’s nice to back up a good performance from last week with another good performance.

“It’s probably what we’ve lacked this year – that consistency in putting back-to-backs together so it’s nice to do that. A nice way to finish, particularly for the players who are leaving our club.

“And I think it shows the spirit in the club even when we don’t reach the finals. It shows it does matter, whether you’re playing in finals or not – every minute matters.

“Even those minutes that you’re waiting for the video ref. It’s a 90-minute game nowadays.”

His frustration with video refereeing decisions and the time it takes to make minds up was clear, not for the first time this year.

“It was five disallowed, four for Kev Penny. There’s a couple of them that were just puzzling,” he said.

“When they give a decision after they’ve looked at it six or seven times - there’s some things there that you can see after the first time they’ve looked.

“Surely they must have seen that the first time but they then decide to look another six or seven times. I just don’t get it and I think it’s become a bugbear of not only mine but a lot of people sick of it and bored of it.

“It breaks the momentum of our game and our sport. It really is a blight on it I think.

“I’d like to get back to the old days where a referee makes a decision and you get on with it. I think we’d accept his decision a whole lot easier because you know he’s only got one look at it.

“If somebody looks at it six or seven times and still gets it wrong I think that’s where the frustration comes.

“But I’m getting off that bandwagon and back on to my team because they were terrific.

“I thought we deserved a scoreline like it ended up. Good on Saints as a grafting team and they never give in and at some stages could have easily come out ahead because it was getting a bit risky for us when we had dominated the game in many respects. But they hang in there and they fight and they graft to the end but I’m glad that we ended up getting our just desserts tonight.

“Saints have deserved it on other occasions this year but I’m going to claim this one because I think it’s right to.”

He reserved special praise for his skipper Joel Monaghan, whose first-half try ensured he ended his five years at the club with a stunning try tally of one per game.

“To finish in the way that he did and with the record that he did – and I thought it was a generous pass from Stefan to give him the 145 from 145 - I think everyone in our team wanted him to finish with that record.

“It’s just an incredible record to have. Averaging one per game is incredible.”

He remarked on departing prop Roy Asotasi’s key part in the concluding moments too.

“Roy came up with that try that probably sealed the game for us when the game was still in the balance but he saved one at the other end that could have lost us the game,” said Smith.

“He comes up with a game-saving try-saving tackle at one end and then he comes up with the try that seals it off a fantastic Bennie Westwood offload. I thought Bennie was outstanding too.

“And it was great for Richie Myler in the part that he played there tonight too. So it was a fitting way for those three to finish and our boys were playing for some boys on the fringes too, Gaz O’Brien and Simon Grix, so it was a nice and fitting way to finish.”