Warrington Wolves boss Tony Smith explains loss to Wigan Warriors and gives update on Ben Currie injury

Wolves’ head of coaching and rugby said he wanted his side to carry on doing what they had been doing at the point of leading 28-14 with 23 minutes remaining as Wigan prop Ben Flower was sent off for a late and high tackle on kicker Dec Patton.

But that did not happen and Shaun Wane’s outfit crossed for 21 unanswered points to spoil the party and send the silverware chase down to the final weekend of the Super 8s rounds.

“The team got carried away in the heat of the moment, I’d suggest.

“Sometimes you don’t have to win a game twice.

“While you commend players in wanting to go on with things and keep playing, I thought we went away from some of what we were trying to do rather than sticking with what was working.”

Wolves, as they have done for much of the season, were enjoying great results by going for Wigan’s throat down the middle of the field.

“We should have had that won,” he said.

“You’d like to think you could close a game out, particularly against a team with a man down.

“But we’ve said it before, teams lift and Wigan did. And we probably came up with a few decision-making plays that cost us and a little bit of impatience.

“We just didn’t handle some of our attacking plays the way we needed to, particularly when they went a man down.

“Instead of sticking with what we’d been doing, we tried to go round them and tried to kick early.

“And even when we were finishing our sets we were giving penalties away to give them cheap field position to play off the back of.

“When we completed our sets in the right way, Wigan struggled to get out of their own area. But when we gave them some penalties they looked good.”

Five minutes either side of Flower’s dismissal, Wolves lost the services of left-sided back rower Ben Currie and impressive hooker Daryl Clark.

Currie had to be carried off with a knee injury, while Clark stiffened up in his back and needed a break before returning to the action a little later.

It was on Currie’s edge that Josh Charnley scored twice to cut the deficit to four points, while Clark’s spark in ripping up Wigan’s ruck area defence was missed while he was off the park.

Wolves still had their chances, with Chris Hill, Stefan Ratchford and Kurt Gidley all being held up inches short of the line in seeking out a winning try and Smith pointed no blame at the forced substitutions having any adverse affect.

“Currie got an injury, a knee injury. We’re not sure how long it will be. When he scored that try it gave way on him a bit and he had to come off. It was unfortunate for Ben and fingers crossed it won’t be for too long.

“Daz Clark had just copped a bit of a shot in his back and he was a bit stiff. But he needed a break at that stage.

“That was just all part and parcel of the game, the players were feeling pretty good out there. Not many of them needed a break throughout the game. I think they were putting in a huge effort and were looking pretty sharp for most of it.

“It was more about some of the decisions of when to go laterally, when to kick the ball, and probably at the end of a couple of sets I thought we gave some cheap opportunities to Wigan to let them out of the pressure pot. It really cost us.”

As ever, Smith cast credit on the opposition – a Wigan side that had lost both previous games to Warrington this season.

“I’ve got to commend Wigan as well on their efforts,” he said.

“Some of their defensive stuff on their own try line when they went a man down was fantastic.

“I also thought they hurt us with some of their late offloads. We didn’t do a good enough job on some of their key players with their offload.

“But we’re going to rue some opportunities, or some decisions we made when we review the game. It’s going to be a hard watch, with some hard lessons as well but hopefully that’ll help us for the big games ahead.”

Smith fully laid the blame of defeat on his side, but was disappointed with some of the decision-making by the match officials.

“I thought there were some really big decisions in that game, some made by the players and some made by the officials,” he said, and made reference to a disallowed Bill Tupou try for Wakefield that appeared to be wrongly ruled out by the video referee in the previous night’s loss to Hull FC.

“They can have an affect. We saw a big decision the night before, which had an affect on that game too.

“I thought Wigan got some bad calls at stages as well. I was shaking my head at some of the calls that went against Wigan, as well.

“I don’t usually make too much of fuss, and I’m not making excuses about our performance. We take ownership of our performance. We didn’t execute or finish off in the way that we needed to. Absolutely our fault that, but there were some big moments in that game that I thought were very harsh.”

Smith was asked to make comments on some of the big decisions.

Lewis Tierney’s try, the one which put Wigan level-pegging late on, appeared on replays studied by the video referee to show the winger’s left hand nicking the touchline before the ball was grounded.

A decision took an age to be reached.

Smith said: “I didn’t watch all that. I fell asleep during that 10-minute break. I went off and boiled the kettle.

“By that stage once you’d watched it 45 times, who can tell. Obviously they watched it enough times to come up with the right decision, they always do.”

Stefan Ratchford was sin binned 10 minutes before half time for completing a tackle on a break by Lewis Tierney.

Referee Robert Hicks ruled the tackle was already complete and showed the Wolves full back the yellow card.

“I’m pretty confident that that player was still sliding and moving on the ground,” said Smith.

“It wasn’t like that tackle was over. I need to look at the rules again. If that’s a sin-binning, we’re going to see a lot of sin-binnings in the rest of the season if they’re going to stay consistent on that. It was a huge call.”

Like Wigan lifted when down to 12 men in the second half, Wolves did without Ratchford too and went from 8-4 behind to 16-8 in front before conceding a ‘soft try’ to Sam Tomkins in the final play of the first period.

Smith also felt Wigan were hard done to by the red card to Flower.

“I thought that was harsh too”, he said.

“All credit to Wigan, and I thought it lifted them. They soaked it up, but I thought it was a harsh call.”

Smith concluded: “We’re blooding some new people and all that sort of stuff, and maybe we’ve got to soak up a bit of pain along the way, but you just hope they (officials) don’t have too big an effect on outcomes.

“I’m not suggesting for one second that all the referees determined the outcome of that game. My players had enough chances to determine the outcome of that game and don’t let it be reported any other way please.”

A draw against second-placed Hull FC at the KCOM Stadium next Friday would be enough for table-topping Wolves to still lift the League Leaders' Shield.

In that scenario, Wigan would finish with the same amount of points if they win their last game at home to Catalans Dragons but the points 'for and against' are +209 in Wolves' favour.

A wn for Hull would almost certainly hand them the Shield.

The only way Wigan can finish top is if Hull beat Warrington as well as the cherry and whites defeating Catalans by a score of 103pts plus any margin of victory the Airlie Birds enjoy over The Wire.