TONY Smith admits Wolves “owe the fans a performance” against Leigh Centurions tomorrow, Friday.

With three regular round games remaining, The Wire’s chances of escaping the Middle 8s are all but over as they trail eighth-placed Huddersfield by three points.

Defeat on Friday, coupled with a Giants victory over Widnes, would confirm Wolves’ place in the bottom four.

Smith says the players are keen to earn local bragging rights against the Centurions and send the fans home happy.

The Wire boss also says their slim chances of reaching the top eight has not changed their desire to win matches.

“We owe our supporters a performance after everything that has gone on this year,” he said.

“They have helped us enormously at different stages and we’re going to need their help again. We’d like to repay them for the support they have shown us.

“It’s important for us to get bragging rights over the guys down the road.

“We are probably going to find ourselves in the Middle 8s, but what it doesn’t change is that you try to win every game as a rugby league player or coach.

“If that is the case, we’ve got to front up and do our best in every game no matter what jersey our opposition is wearing and what stadium we are playing in.

“We’ll address that down the track, it’s about doing a job on Leigh this week for our own personal pride.”

“We suffered a defeat at their place and we’d like to reciprocate the feeling.”

The Wire are boosted by the return of four players to contention, with Ben Pomeroy available to make his debut for the club after a knee injury.

Ben Westwood (hand) is set for his first appearance since May 20, while Dec Patton (leg) and Tom Lineham (abductor) are also available to Smith.

Will Dagger, who has been cleared of serious injury to his neck after being stretchered off in Saturday’s 26-12 loss to Wakefield Trinity, drops out along with Kevin Penny, Sam Wilde and Jack Johnson.

Wolves are looking to bounce back from defeat at Belle Vue and Smith says they have been focusing their last-tackle plays during this week’s training.

“We’ve been addressing some of that in training, the importance of that is enormous as we all know,” he said.

“It hurt us last week when we didn’t convert some of our opportunities into points or over-kicked.

“It’s a big turnaround now that you have to retreat 30 metres, it’s very difficult to recover.

“It cost us and we understand that it hurt us energy wise. We’ve spoken a lot about it and we’ve tried to address it.”