OUR Warrington Guardian Fan Panel is back for another week!

We put the call out to our panel members for their thoughts on Warrington Wolves’ third victory in a row – the 22-20 success at Hull KR on Thursday evening.

Here is what panellists Chris McKean, Rob Croston, Louis Banks and Mark Robinson thought…

CHRIS MCKEAN

That was a good win, good in terms of it being a game we were widely tipped to lose.

Call me negative, but I don't see much to get me excited for the back end of the season. Hull KR could easily have had another four tries had passes stuck after breaks they made.

We are struggling in the middle as soon as Vaughan and Harrison go off, struggling to gain ground and prevent our opponents from gaining ground. We need another two props in my opinion.

Our defence on the flanks (especially our right) is very shaky. It all reeks of the last few seasons currently. We are beating weak teams or teams who don't play well, then the wheels fall off at some point.

I'm sure we will look great until the end of June. In July, we play Wigan twice and Saints once, so I'll make a judgement call on if we look after better than last season at the start of August.

There's not much to say about the next fixture – London have a very poor team and even if we played badly I don't see us losing.

ROB CROSTON

What do you expect when you go to Hull KR? A team on form, building something on and off the field and delivering a great brand of rugby.

Wire needed to show they could stand up and be counted – this was going to be a real test of where they were at and a chance to show progress being made.

For the first 20 minutes, Hull KR were not able to get a look in – Warrington turned up with some great defence and forced Hull KR to step up and work out of their own area.

When Wire had ball in hand, there were definitely signs there that the attack under Martin Gleeson is starting to click into gear, showing what they can do with a nice tip-on from Matt Dufty for George Williams to open the scoring for the evening.

Another notable try late in the half came courtesy of a fluent move from Leon Hayes, quick hands out and a clever pass by Fitzgibbon for Toby King to ghost through.

On the flip side, Hull KR took their chances very well and did stand Warrington’s defence up a couple of times and made hay.

Overall though, the game was evenly poised and I wouldn’t have been too disheartened if had we of lost.

That is how rugby league should be played – fast and quick with that unpredictable nature. Credit should go to both teams for that entertainment factor.

 

Warrington head down to London next weekend to take on the London Broncos. Wire can’t afford to take their foot off the gas – they need to learn from the defensive errors on Thursday and be ready for what London will throw at them.

Wire won’t need the luck of the Irish next week, they just need to show more improvement.

LOUIS BANKS

Going into this game, I was thinking we would struggle as the Robins are red-hot favourites and the Sky pundits never gave us a chance either, but our togetherness as a team pulled us through a really tough encounter.

We stuck together as a team and ground out a great win.

This word “resilience” keeps being used but we can definitely see a change in mentality!

MARK ROBINSON

Great result and dogged determination from the team. Admittedly, HKR helped us a couple of times but we took great advantage of it.

Dufty was outstanding and the more I’m seeing of Fitzgibbon, the more he reminds me of Trent Waterhouse in his determination.

We clearly need some goal-kicking practice it would have been awful to lose that having scored more tries, but you can now start to see small glimpses of what’s to come from this team yet. A great result against a team with ambitions of their own.

On to London – we have to go there and be really dominant, nothing short of a big score to let the rest of the league know we are here.