The 2 moments giving insight into Warrington Wolves mindset

OCCASIONALLY a team comes so close to the perfect performance that they hope for every week.

That was the case for The Wire on Friday night.

Once the tries started there was a surreal inevitability that many more would follow.

They started the game well, which they have done in most games so far this season.

What was different this time was that there was no let up or lull in either the intensity or quality of the performance throughout the match.

Every player performed as if they were desperate to impress, possibly a sign of the strength in depth of the squad where virtually every player might feel they are only a couple of poor performances away from being dropped.

The sheer speed of The Wire attack looked way too much for Hull to handle all night.

Blake Austin had his best performance so far for The Wire, looking ever more like the piece that has been missing from the jigsaw for a few years.

The success rate of his dummies has been widely reported. Like all good salesmen he makes what he wants people to buy look so convincing - holding the ball as if ready to pass, angling his run to get the defenders moving away from where he wants to step to and leaving the decision to pass or not late enough to leave no time for defenders to recover.

Hull will be hurt bitterly by this defeat on their own patch. What will sting the most is probably the way they were dominated down the middle.

The Wire’s forwards, who have developed their passing game this year, showed they still have plenty of desire and ability to do the hard running too.

Barely a ball went to ground from The Wire throughout the night, even when they attacked with such pace and width.

Almost with each passing week they are looking more and more likely to score tries.

The variation from where tries are coming from is making The Wire incredibly difficult to defend against.

Slick handling moves out wide, cross-field kicks, forwards passing at the defensive line, offloads and quick play-the-balls down the middle and a running half-back have all resulted in numerous tries already this season.

In among the excellence there were two moments that were noteworthy to give an insight into the mindset of this team.

> Guardian verdict in words, pictures and footage

One was late on when they defended their try line with the desperation you would expect if they were two points ahead in the last minute of the Grand Final.

The other was when they took the opportunity to practice setting up for a drop goal – something they have been infuriatingly bad at for a few years now.

The combination of great pride in defending their try line and clarity of thought is a greatly encouraging sign.

Now the improvement becomes more difficult, the challenge now is for that performance to become the norm - for that ruthless streak to become a team trademark, so much so that teams fear playing The Wire and are almost beaten before the game starts.

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Other than St Helens none of the other Super League teams are looking like genuine title contenders at the moment, so The Wire need to take this opportunity to be as dominant as possible this season.

When it comes to play-off time not only do the Warrington players want to be believing that they will win, they want the opposition believing it too.

Throughout it all they should remember that all the tries and the big wins come from the foundation of running and hitting harder than their opponents.

This performance had many hallmarks of the 2011 team, hopefully this team will be at least as dominant as them in the regular season, with a much happier ending.