SPIRIT OF 55: Controlled performance adds to my confidence (From Warrington Guardian)

SPIRIT OF 55: Controlled performance adds to my confidence

10:36am Tuesday 26th June 2012 in Wolves news

IGNORING the score board can be one of the toughest things to do in sport, whether you're a player, coach or fan.

If you did manage to ignore the scoreboard for the first 15 minutes or so of Sunday's game against Hull then I think you'd have to acknowledge a dominant display by Wire over a more than decent Hull team.

Watching from the East Stand you hardly got to see any close-up action in the second half, Hull's only foray into the Wire 20-metre area in that half coming in the dying moments.

Although I'm sure they'll be disappointed with the way they conceded the three tries, the Warrington players and coaching staff should be delighted with the way they responded to them.

It wasn't a case of a dramatic turn around, brilliantly changing the part way through the game or changes to the personnel having an immediate effect on proceedings.

Instead it was a firm belief that what they had set out to do was more than good enough to win the game, if they stuck to it and trusted it for the full eighty minutes.

Also having a strike player like Atkins bang on form was always going to keep the Wire in the game.

The long awaited return of Michael Monaghan was roundly cheered, and he definitely did influence the game in a positive way.

Not too many signs of cobwebs as he starting jumping from acting half back, bringing players onto the ball with accurate and easy to catch pop passes and directing players around the play the ball area.

Hull took advantage of extra tackles to score the first try and then an offload in the middle followed by swift handling created an overlap on the left which they exposed to race to a 10-0 lead.

Warrington got the ultimate reward for one of their trademark charge downs, Carvell’s block resulting in Atkins first of his hat trick.

Hull stretched the lead to ten points again, before Warrington’s left side created two more tries and an even first half ended with the score tied at eighteen points all.

Atkins second was the result of some classic Warrin'gton offloads, which produced a classic reaction from a fan near me as he watched the offloads: ‘No, no, no.........ooh yes!'

The second half dominance was asserted gradually, a combination of strong running and excellent footwork resulted in lots of good play the balls, and that combined with a limited amount of handling errors and penalties conceded produced the territorial advantage that eventually influenced the scoreboard.

After what appeared to be around the seventh final warning to Hull, Manu was sent to the sin bin for interference at the play the ball.

Hull had obviously decided that their best chance for success was to slow Warrington down and that risking the wrath of the referee was a risk worth taking.

The sin binning came at a time when Warrington were looking to finally put a bit of daylight between themselves and Hull on the scoreboard, and indeed they took advantage of the extra player to do just that.

Once Wire were two scores ahead there was only going to be one winner, in the end it was an impressive score line against a team who could still end up in the top four.

This was the latest match to back up what I was saying in last week’s article about how impressive the Wire squad has become. Hodgson, Myler, Morley, Westwood, Grix and Solomona were among the absentees this time.

Whilst watching a match though I find myself noticing who is playing, rather than thinking about who isn’t, which is another sign of the strength in depth.

One of the most controlled performances of the season so far adds to my confidence in Warrington building up to their best form at just the right time.

Spirit of 55