WARRINGTON Wolves winger Tom Lineham’s hair was shaved off by teammate Dec Patton.

Winger Lineham arrived at Hull KR for Friday night’s Challenge Cup quarter-final sporting a new look given to him the night before when the team was staying at a nearby hotel.

Warrington Guardian:

Tom Lineham arriving at Hull KR's KCOM Craven Park on Friday. Picture: Mike Boden

Earlier in the week, prankster Lineham had teammates and fans laughing when he branded Patton a ‘snitch’ on a club video following an incident in training and said he would not be talking to the scrum-half until he apologised.

“He only ever tells one side of a story, doesn’t he,” said Patton as he explained the reasoning behind what had led to Lineham's video remarks.

> WATCH: Lineham brands Patton a 'snitch'

“It was a kind of a ‘get-back’ for him for the way he was, but if you see his head I had the nice thing of doing that as well.

“You know what Tommy’s like, we’re calling Tommy ‘Attention’. He’ll make stuff up. He didn’t make it up, I did get him.

“He tried to get me midweek so it was a bit of a small cop-out from him doing it publicly.

“I’ve laughed at some of the comments we’ve got.

“That’s what he’s all about. He loves the attention.

Warrington Guardian:

Dec Patton ahead of Friday's Challenge Cup quareter-final win. Picture; Mike Boden

“It’s a good laugh. We all have a good laugh with him. That’s the sort of character he is. You can see with the way he talks and over exaggerates everything.

“He’s a great bloke and he’s a great bloke to have around the team. And he can pick you up sometimes."

After Friday's game the players were being given a few days off so Lineham wanted a hair cut for a short break away.

“I shaved his head, that was a bit nice," said Patton.

"That wasn’t my payback, I’ll get him worse than that don’t you worry about that. Shaving his head is nothing.

“He wanted a number one, but we got it all off. We gave him a bit of a knuckle head.

“Tommy doesn’t mind having his hair cut by the lads sometimes. He said he fancied a bit of a change.

“All this ‘I’m not talking to him and all that’, he did it for a day. He over exaggerates.

“We have a bit of a laugh and we just whipped his hair off last night but I got a bit of enjoyment out of doing it.”

Both Lineham and Patton were sin-binned in the first half against Hull KR but their teammates worked overtime to prevent them from scoring.

Warrington Guardian:

Patton returns to the dug-out after his yellow card. Picture: Mike Boden

“Going down to 11 men in that first half and not conceding at all shows what sort of a team we are,” said the 24-year-old scrum-half who revealed what was going through his head as he walked off after a yellow card issued for what he described as an accidental ball steal while the team was on a referee warning for consistently infringing.

“You kind of feel as though you’ve let your team down but at the end of the day I tried to grab the ball and keep hold of him but the ball’s reefed out. It was one of them,” he said.

“Watching and seeing the work that the fellas had to go through, especially in the middle with at least 20 minutes where we had at least one player off the field, it’s tough.

“It shows how resilient they are to keep the points away.

“At the end of the day it was an up and down game for us but we came out on top.”



 

He feels that successfully battling through the rare instance of being two men short will prove to be character building for the team.

“At half-time we said we’ve weathered the storm, and it doesn’t happen very often in rugby league where you have two men off the field,” he said.

“We’ll take a lot of confidence out of that and hopefully from now with 13 men on the field we’ll do better each time.

“I think we got a bit complacent in the second half when we went 22 points up, started throwing silly offloads and not sticking to our game plan. It bit us on the backside.

“We’ve got to get better at seeing games out and not letting teams back in when we’ve got the lead but we came away with the win so it’s happy days.

“It’s knockout stages so a win’s a win at the end of the day and that’s all that matters.”

Like his coach Steve Price in the post-match press conference, Patton was not prepared to point the finger at the team running out of fuel in the second half as a consequence of the extra effort needed when down to 11 in the first half.

“We back our fitness and we back our ability as a team but there’s no excuses,” he said.

“If we hadn’t made the mistakes we did, the pressure wouldn’t have been put on ourselves.

“We need to fix that up and coach wasn’t happy – and rightly so.

“We’ll learn from it but it’s a good win at the end of the day because it’s a tough place to come.”

Warrington Guardian:

Dec Patton and half-back partner Blake Austin are the first to congratulate Ben Currie on what proved to be the winning try at Hull KR. Picture: Mike Boden

And now The Wire, runners-up to Catalans Dragons in last year’s decider, can look forward to a ninth Challenge Cup semi-final in 11 years when they take on Hull FC at the University of Bolton Stadium on Saturday, July 27.

“This is what we’re about. We want to be in the big games and we feel like we’re working hard to be,” said Patton.

> READ: Hull KR 22 Warrington Wolves 28, Guardian verdict

“If it’s winning by a point or 50 points, at the end of the day it’s knockout games, we’ve got there, we’re 80 minutes away from Wembley and making a big special day.

“We’ve been there before and we’ve been hurt, so hopefully we can take a bit out of that and take it into the next round.”