TONY Smith questioned whether some of his players felt the effects of the bus journey before getting their act together in the second half to maintain their fine record at the KC Stadium.

Wolves, unbeaten this year, have not lost away to Hull since 2007 and recorded 20 points on the bounce in the second half to take tonight’s game out of their reach.

Smith said: “ We were a little bit off the pace of the game that we’d like to play in the first half.

“That can happen in games and that’s not taking anything away from Hull because I thought they were really good in the first half and asked some questions of us.

“There were some signs from us as to whether it was the bus trip. Sometimes when you sit on a bus for a couple of hours and then it’s cold and miserable you’re not quite full of the energy that you’d like to be at and that’s how we looked at times.

“That was only some of our players, some of the boys were on their game in the first half.

“The players sat down and had a talk about what they’d like to do in the second half and went out there and did it.

“It looked like whichever team could lift from half time would possibly go away with the result. The game was crying out for somebody to grab hold of it and fortunately on this occasion it was us.

“I thought we’d been trying individually rather than as a team. I couldn’t fault the effort but the way it was coming together as a team.

“But in the second half we gelled. Everyone communicated with each other and everybody knew what each other was doing. We weren’t quite getting that facet right in the first half.

“It’s nice to know that we can lift when needed.”