DARYL Powell admits his Warrington Wolves side will have to “improve significantly” on the performance they showed in defeat to Wigan Warriors on Saturday.

In what was their first game under Powell’s leadership, The Wire were beaten 14-6 by their neighbours in Stefan Ratchford’s Testimonial match.

They failed to fire with ball in hand, with only Matty Ashton’s second-half try to show for their efforts while Wigan looked the more threatening side throughout, with Jai Field crossing twice to go with a further Iain Thornley try.

While Powell insisted pre-season had gone to plan for his side, he said that would count for little if performances continued along this trend.

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With their opening Super League fixture against Leeds Rhinos now less than a fortnight away, he says there is plenty of hard work ahead.

"I wanted it to look a little bit better than it did, to be honest,” he said.

"It’s our first game so there’s an understanding that it’s not going to look perfect by any stretch.

"I thought in the first half, our game management was poor. We conceded a try from a kick out of nowhere and two genuine tries.

"I thought Wigan looked a little more fluent with the ball and that’s something we have to tidy up.

"In the second half, I thought we panicked. We reverted to type a little bit.

"We didn’t get what we wanted, Wigan defended well and our execution and patience weren’t where they needed to be.

"Obviously, a lot to improve on and we’ll have to improve significantly over the next couple of weeks.

“Even though we got opportunities, our execution was never really good enough.

“It’s a heads-up for us. It’s a smack on the nose for us ahead of the season and we’re going to need to tidy some things up and work hard going into the Leeds game.”

After an even opening quarter, Wolves fell behind when Gareth Widdop’s kick bounced invitingly for Kai Pearce-Paul to break and hand on for Field to canter home before Thornley dived over in the corner before the break.

The hosts’ one true opening-up of the Wigan defence led to their only try, with Ratchford’s cut-out ball getting Ashton around the outside of Liam Marshall to score.

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The raising of hopes was brief, however, as Patrick Mago’s expert offload sent Field flying through a gap to double his account just three minutes later.

“We have got two weeks and a game against Salford next Friday,” he said.

“It’s one of those things – it doesn’t always look the way you want it to look. We’ve had a good pre-season but that doesn’t matter too much if we don’t turn it into performances.

“Clearly, we’re disappointed with our performance but it’s been a class night for Stef. From that perspective, it’s a positive and there’s loads of lessons from us.

“What it does do is steel players’ mentality for the next couple of weeks knowing we’ve got some work to do.”

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Pictures by Mike Boden