TONY Smith has suggested that Richie Myler and Stefan Ratchford should be providing England boss Steve McNamara with some selection headaches after leading Wolves to a 68-10 rout of their former club Salford City Reds.
Wolves’ outstanding playmaking duo shone at full back and scrum half to leave McNamara, who was watching the home side’s domination from the stands, with some questions to ponder ahead of International Origin match in a few week’s time and the World Cup later this year.
Smith said: “I think Myler is a better player than he was a year ago, I think he has improved and improved and is still doing so at a rate.
“He is one of our most consistent performers, along with Ratchford, who is a pretty special player as well.
“He can play in the halves, and full back and I know Steve McNamara was here today watching them.
“He has a pretty special player in Tomkins at the back, but if he were to not be there for any reason then Steve has a pretty good player sitting behind him in that position, and that’s if he doesn’t use him in the halves.
“He has a few choices from our lot.”
But it was not just the former Salford duo that stood out in the sunshine at the Halliwell Jones Stadium, where Wolves completely and utterly dominated the visitors across the park to run in 12 tries from Ben Currie, two, Ratchford, Myler, Joel Monaghan, two, Michael Monaghan, Micky Higham, Chris Riley.
The haul was completed by a rare treble for Ben Westwood, who after touching down his 100th try for Wolves in the fourth minute, went on to score again two minutes later and again in the 57th minute to complete his hat-trick.
Smith praised the second rower, who is currently celebrating his testimonial year at the club, and also Simon Grix, who celebrated his 150th appearance in primrose and blue after making his debut in April, 2006.
“Simon was terrific, we had a presentation for him yesterday,” said Smith.
“Simon has done exceptionally well this year, I think he has been terrific.
“He has been one of our most consistent performers and I am pleased for him.
“He has played in all sorts of positions this year and done a good job wherever.
“Ben played well, too.
“He has been building up to that performance, as have a few in our team.
“That was the challenge for them, to perform the best they have all year.
“I think Benny did that, Micahel Monaghan looked fantastic when he came on and looked like his improvement has continued.
“I thought Garreth Carvell had his strongest game for us, he has been building up to that too and a lot of things came off the back of Garreth’s carries.”
Smith admitted that it may have been easy for his side to lose focus after recent results against Salford, praising his side’s application in the 68-10 victory.
“It was a pretty complete performance,” he said.
“I thought we were very committed and the easy thing to do would have been to not compete at our best today because of recent hit outs against these opponents.
“To stand up deliver again, I thought it took some commitment and overcoming the complacency tag that you can have going into a game like that.
“There was no sign of that today, I thought out boys were very good and they stuck to the task they set out to do.”
