TONY Smith has confirmed there will be changes to his back-room team leading into the 2016 campaign.

He said there needs to be improvement in both preventing injuries and coping with them.

And he feels some of this season’s injuries, leading to an average six absences per match and as high as 10 at times – could have been prevented.

Although not apportioning blame on the season’s performance to injuries, he said the high numbers have put a strain on resources.

“We’re making a lot of changes for next year in terms of some personnel both on and off the field,” said Smith, Wolves’ head of coaching and rugby.

“We’re recruiting in all sorts of areas. We’ve identified some issues and we’re going to try and fix them.”

He added: "It was three-quarters of the year before I started mentioning our injuries and I did so because a lot of other teams were getting a lot of recognition of injuries and we weren't, we were just soaking it up.

"Since Round 4, we've averaged six injuries from our first-team squad. We've had up to 10 on a number of occasions this year.

"That puts a strain on a 25-man squad. We've put some kids in on top of that.

"It's tough to do that but that's what it takes. And if you're going to win Super League you've either got to be able to either prevent some of those injuries - which is a big part of it - or be able to cope with those sort of injuries.

"At the moment we can't do that as a club and that's what we're striving for in the future - to be able to prevent some of those injuries from happening but also coping when it does happen.

"It's the reality of what happens. I'm not blaming our whole season on injuries but it puts you under a whole lot of strain, it puts all our players under a whole lot of strain."

A number of backroom changes occurred last year, including head of strength and conditioning Chris Baron departing and Mick Turner coming in from Wigan to take over.

There were coaching changes too, with Willie Poching and Richard Marshall moving on to other clubs and former Wakefield head coach Richard Agar coming in as Smith's number two.