DARYL Powell hailed the resilience of his Warrington Wolves side following their dramatic Challenge Cup victory in Perpignan.

Matty Ashton scored his second try of the game in the final minute to snatch a 16-14 victory over Catalans Dragons and book a place in the quarter-final draw.

Ashton’s first try and an effort from Matt Dufty had put The Wire 12-0 up in a first half in which they created several guilt-edged opportunities to score without taking them.

That put them at risk of being reeled in and sure enough, the Dragons set about fighting back and Matt Ikuvalu’s try – a score which came while the hosts were down to 12 men following Michael McIlorum’s sin-binning – completed the turnaround after Arthur Romano and Tom Johnstone had earlier scored.

However, Warrington had the final say and Powell was full of praise for his players.

“Winning it in that way is a great way to win a game,” he said.

“It’s tough for Catalans as I thought they played well in the second half, but the mood is great.

“The boys are buzzing and know that we’re probably not playing at our best at the moment, but we’re winning games against really tough teams.

“I thought it would be a tight game. We were really good in the first half and we created a lot of opportunities – Pete gets away but puts a forward pass in, Daryl Clark drops the ball over the line.

“It flipped a little bit in the second half – I don’t think we started great and we didn’t have as much cutting edge as we’d want when we got in good positions.

“We’re pretty resilient, we hung around and found our opportunity right at the death.

“That’s a big win for us today – they’re a big physical team who don’t lose much here.”

With his side four points clear at the top of Super League, The Wire are now competing on two fronts as they survived the first cut of top-flight outfits to keep hopes of a first Challenge Cup Final since winning the competition in 2019 alive.

Focus now turns back to the bread and butter of league action as Warrington visit an in-form Leigh Leopards side on Friday, with the quarter-finals not played until the weekend of June 16-18.

However, Powell is confident his side can balance the requirements of two competitions.

“You can only play one game a week so as long as you approach it in the right way, being in both competitions could be fine,” he said.

“We’ve got a short-ish turnaround to Leigh now but it is what it is – I think our prep was good coming over here yesterday.

“I don’t think it diverts too much – we’ve just got to crack on.”

Powell also says it appears as though his side have emerged from a bruising encounter unscathed in terms of injury, although there were concerns for one member of his squad.

“Josh Thewlis looked like he might have to leave the field at one point, but he’s a tough character so he stayed on,” the head coach said.

“I’ve not had chance to look in detail yet but the physio hasn’t flagged anything up immediately so hopefully, we should be fine.”