WARRINGTON Wolves boss Daryl Powell has explained what is being done to try and eradicate late collapses from the team's performances.

In four of their past seven matches, a winning position has been lost and it has left The Wire floundering third from bottom of the Super League table.

Wire led 22-14 at Huddersfield last time out but went on to lose the game, though Powell considers the circumstances behind that late slip differently to the others.

“There’s been some game management principles of what we’re trying to do when we’re in these positions," said Powell.

“There’s a couple of games where we haven’t handled those situations well in terms of how we’re trying to play the game.

“So we’ve tried to do some work in practice that helps us to deal with those scenarios from a team understanding perspective of what we’re trying to do.

“Hull KR was probably the prime example of where we were in such a good position and then we mounted up error after penalty after error, and we conceded 15 minutes before the end. In that situation the team felt under pressure so we have to be able to manage that more effectively.

“So we’ve practiced those scenarios. We’ve done other things like put the score and time up on the scoreboard at the stadium as we’re practicing and go through what is a systematic way of playing in order to manage the game.

“Last week was a little bit different because we ended up having Joe Bullock sin-binned on the back of what potentially should have been a sin-binning (of Huddersfield's Oliver Russell) for a trip on Matt Dufty, but that didn’t happen, Bullock gets sin-binned on the next set and I thought we were pretty tough there on our line to defend them for four sets before we conceded on the last play.

“The pivotal moments are not going our way at the moment. Some of it is our doing, some of it there’s not a lot you can do about it, and we’ve just got to keep working through how to finish a game.

“We’ve worked hard on it, but you can’t replicate the pressure of a game.

"So you can go through some of the systematic ways, but the pressure and fatigue of a game is a different matter and that’s what we need to manage better.”

Some fans have been questioning the team's fitness because of the falling away in the last 20 minutes or so.

“I’ll tell you why it would be a fitness issue, it’s the amount of tackles more that we have to make than the opposition every week," said Powell.

“That’s been consistent all the way through the year. And we’ve worked hard to try and negate that, but the fact remains at times we make 100 more tackles than the opposition and that is then going to cause some stress somewhere else.

“The way you can navigate that is to get more repeat sets, get more double sets on the opposition line.

“There’s a few different things. There’s territory and there’s possession. There’s been games this year where we’ve been on the right side of those, but that’s what creates fatigue and that’s why people question fitness.

“But we’ve got an outstanding strength and conditioning team at the club and they do a great job. I don’t think it’s that, I think it’s what we’re doing to ourselves in a game and getting that right is what’s going to help us turn the tide on that."