WOLVES head coach Tony Smith said his side rued missed opportunities in their 34-14 Magic Weekend defeat to Castleford Tigers.

The Wire scorched into a 14-0 lead as they enjoyed the better of the first half, but the Yorkshiremen stormed back to take a comfortable win as Wire produced a lacklustre second half.

The defeat was Wire’s second in a row and could drop as low as third depending on tomorrow’s results for nearest rivals Hull FC and Catalans.

Smith said he was pleased with the start his side made but admitted they underperformed after the break.

“We had good control on the momentum of the game for the first half hour, we should have had more points on the board with the opportunities we created,” he said.

“We should have nailed a few more points, I was hoping we wouldn’t rue that but we did.

“Cas threw a bit of caution to the wind, it came off and gave them a bit of confidence to have a crack.”

Tries from Stefan Ratchford, Kurt Gidley and Ben Currie gave Wolves the ideal start, but Denny Solomona and Luke Dorn both scored braces to seal the win for Daryl Powell’s side.

“I didn’t like some of our reactions to some of the penalties we gave away, we went away from what we were doing in that first 30 minutes and it really hurt us,” Smith said.

“We need to be better than what we were in that second half, we'll learn hard lessons and bounce back as best we can.

“We showed in the first part of that match that when we do things well, I thought we were a bit sloppy in that try from the scrum but there is some steel there with some of the scrambled defending we came up with.

“You hope to use any of your bad moments and turn them into positives, we're going to try and rectify some of the issues we saw there.”

Whilst there was a debut for Ryan Bailey and a return for Toby King, Smith confirmed full-back Matty Russell could be out for a while with a hamstring injury.

“Matty Russell has done a hamstring, that's all we know at this stage,” he said.

“He's been good for us, he's a terrific attacking player and we'll miss his spark if he is out for a while, but we’ll know more in the next couple of days when we get it scanned.”