DARYL Powell was full of praise for his young guns and the pack after an important 32-10 home win for Warrington Wolves against Huddersfield Giants.

Academy product Riley Dean came into the halves and helped to orchestrate arguably The Wire’s best performance of the season so far, one in which impressive full-back Josh Thewlis stole the show with a hat-trick of tries while returning centre Connor Wrench crossed for a crucial score in the second half when the game was still in the balance.

With George Williams withdrawing from selection on Thursday, Dean only had Friday’s team run to prepare to feature in the halves alongside Peter Mata’utia whose usual centre place was then taken at short notice by Thewlis.

Despite the disruption capping a hectic schedule, The Wire pulled off a much needed and much deserved victory that keeps them in touch with the top four.

Firstly, Powell acknowledged the collective display as Warrington dismantled the form fourth-placed side which included the returning ex-Wire skipper Chris Hill.

"Really pleased with that on the back of a really tough schedule around Easter,” said Powell, whose side lost to a controversial late try at Hull FC 18-16 on Monday four days after defeating Salford Red Devils 32-18 at home.

"The energy and effort in the performance was great.

"I thought we defended really well and special mentions for some of the young boys who gave us some real spark.

"I think it was an outstanding team performance with some really good individual performances in there.

"The way that we played was a big step forward for us.

"I thought we'd won on Monday if I'm honest but we have got an opportunity against Wigan next to really start to grow what we're doing."

Powell then heaped the plaudits on full-back Thewlis, 19, and Dean, 20.

“I felt last week Josh was our best player and I think today he was class,” he said.

“He’s got a real eye and an instinct for the game and I thought some of his combinations with Riley Dean were outstanding.

“I was really pleased with Riley. He looked a little bit nervous before the game but I think he’s delivered a really composed collected performance for a young half-back.

“I thought we defended really well but some of that comes on how you finish your sets, and how you get control of what you’re doing on the last tackle.

“And I thought that’s the best we’ve been for the whole season so far. Riley delivered some of that, getting repeat sets, finishing in corners.

“And I thought our pack were great. I thought defensively they really got after Huddersfield, who’d rested a few players – Chris Hill in particular. I thought we dominated the middle part of the field, so that was pleasing as well.

“They’ve had a fair bit of stick this year but I thought they were on top form for the most part in that game.

“Connor coming in late, I thought he was class today. He’s had a fair period out and against one of the best centres in the compeition in Leutele I thought he handled him really well.”

Powell added: “We did get a good start. I just thought we moved the ball into good areas. I thought we were really intelligent where we put the ball to space, with Riley a big part of that.

“Obviously there was a couple of sin-binnings in there, and I thought we played the game really smartly around those sin-binnings to get ourselves in front like we did.

“That try we conceded just before half-time was disappointing but I just felt we had complete control of the game.

“We started the second half a little bit off, defensively, but they made a couple of errors which let us off the hook.

“But overall it’s one of our best performances of the season so far and looking at the last three performances in terms of effort you can see we’re in a good place and we’re improving.”

With Thewlis stringing together a fine run of performances, Powell accepted he is making himself difficult to leave out for when experienced internationals Gareth Widdop, Stefan Ratchford and Williams are available again.

“Absolutely. And I think Riley Dean playing like that is going to make it difficult as well,” said Powell.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to make too many changes next week in terms of the half-back pairing so if he does it again then you start thinking a little bit differently because he’s pulled together the way we wanted our game to look pretty efficiently today.”