WOLVES' head coach Paul Cullen has pulled no punches this week in reviewing his team's crushing end to a season of many highlights.

Hull's victory at The Halliwell Jones Stadium, and in particular the 22 points they scored in the final 11 minutes, hit everyone in the Wolves camp like an unexpected smack in the mouth but Cullen has clear thoughts on the areas where Wolves need to improve to challenge for honours next year and beyond.

Cullen said: "The only thing that is relevant is absolute honesty in our post-game and season assessment.

"And the bottom line is that as a unit we were not mentally tough enough to go one more round.

"There have been many highs in the season and we've set a standard that we need to find again next year, which I've got no doubt we can do.

"But the work we need to do is the work that is going to get us into the physical and psychological state where we can take a round, another round and then another round.

"Unfortunately for us, our season finished in round 28 with a heroic effort and fantastic performance to back up our great win against Leeds with an even better win at Hull. Unfortunately, that was enough physically and mentally for some of our players."

The last two league games, coinciding with the arrival of Andrew Johns, were of Grand Final pace and intensity, and finally took their toll on one of the smallest squads in Super League.

Cullen said: "Emotionally it is very difficult to factor and equate how much energy is expended in the build-up and aftermath of the Leeds and Hull games.

"But Hull are a side that are probably two or three years in advance of where we are when it comes to building the mentalities into a group of players.

"Let's not forget, Hull finished third last year and were knocked out of the play-offs very embarrassingly by Wakefield, who had scraped into sixth spot. The previous year they did not make the play-offs at all.

"So they have tasted the pain that we tasted on Saturday night and it has served them well. Hull are a club that we aspire to follow. Those lessons in mental toughness are only learnt when you hit the floor, as we did in the final 11 minutes of Saturday's game."

Cullen added: "As for the game itself on Saturday, the players were a little bit nervous, a little bit fractious and they pushed the final pass a little bit too much on the many occasions that we got through the Hull line.

"On 69 minutes the score was still only 18-6. We'd bombed at least half a dozen chances in that 69-minute period and any one of those scores would have greatly affected that game.

"And the fact that we lost Chris Leikvoll with a serious rib injury in the first tackle and fellow prop Mark Hilton with a recurrence of his back injury it took a lot of sting out of the Warrington go-forward.

"We intended to win the game in the middle channels but with the loss of Leikvoll and Hilton we lost a massive amount of our impact and armoury.

"I thought Paul Wood, aided and abetted by Danny Lima, did a great job in holding that middle channel and game plan but two props rolling against the quality of Hull's four made life exceptionally difficult.

"We spent an awful lot of energy mopping up after mistakes and taking on the Hull pack in the middle of the field.

"And that is the reason they ran in four tries in 11 minutes - because once the game had gone, it had gone."

Wolves' players have had this week off work but return to the fold on Monday, albeit briefly, to learn about October's off-season and November's pre-season training programmes. There will be more details on this in next Thursday's Warrington Guardian.