Warrington Wolves head coach on Magic Weekend loss to Hull FC

The Wire boss watched his side surrender a 12-0 lead to lose 30-18 to Hull FC at Magic Weekend to make it back-to-back defeats amid a wider run of four losses in their past six Super League games.

Having led 12-6 at half-time, Warrington conceded 24 second-half points to a resurgent Hull side, for whom Josh Griffin scored a hat-trick.

Here is everything Powell said in his post-match press conference...

Q: That must be a real disappointment given the start you had to the game?

DP: We talked about starting better and we did just that, but the game flipped a little bit on kick-offs – they got it back straight after our second try then we concede a try from a kick which we did throughout the game.

And then at the start of the second half, we just never got going. Our start to the first half was class but our start to the second was pretty much non-existent.

They scored a try again from getting the kick-off back, so it’s frustrating. We’ve lost a little bit of confidence at the moment.

We’re working hard to get it back, but that was a really tough second half.

We score a try to get ourselves back to within touching distance but then we concede one pretty soon after – we’ve got a bit of work to do.

Josh Griffin celebrates his hat-trick try (Image: SWPix.com)

Q: Those kick-offs from Jake Clifford will no doubt have been something you looked at in video sessions but I guess knowing what’s coming and stopping it are two different things?

DP: He doesn’t always put them in the same space – they’re pretty much like spiral bombs and they’re tough to deal with.

You’re pretty spread out on kick-offs and we tried to condense that but they just went and got it.

They’ll be practicing that all the time, we practiced dealing with it this week in training and did alright but it’s a bit of a lottery when they put it up there.

We’ve conceded too many points again, quite a few from kicks but our right edge got exposed a few times on pass plays.

We need to do some work on dealing with that for sure.

Danny Houghton's try for Hull came after they had regained the kick-off following Wire's second score (Image: SWPix.com)

Q: You go 12-0 up after a positive start and you had 60 per cent possession in the first half but left a lot of points out there.

Can you put your finger on what went wrong with the ball?

DP: I felt like we put a lot of pressure on them with the repeat sets we were getting, but we said at half time that we’d played short a hell of a lot. Duff (Matt Dufty) didn’t get a lot of ball out the back.

We had an opportunity that we took using that in the second half down our right, but we’re not clinical at the moment.

We feel like once we fix one part of our game up, something else isn’t quite there but we’re working hard to connect it all together.

There’s a bit to do defensively – we were class with that in the first half but dropped off a fair bit in the second.

We’re trying to piece our whole game together but we’ve lost a couple of tough games by a bigger margin than we’d want. You never want to lose but we’re conceding too many points at the moment.

George Williams' try helped Wire surge into a 12-0 lead (Image: SWPix.com)

Q: You’re obviously still in a good position in the table but you’ve been expressing a bit of concern about performances for a few weeks and now, that’s starting to reflect in results.

As we sit right now just over the halfway point of the season, how concerned are you about where things are currently?

DP: We’ve lost two games straight – games you might say we should be winning but Leigh have been playing great and Hull are improving.

We’re on a flat line at the moment and we’ve got to turn that line upwards.

There’s some parts to our game that are not great and confidence isn’t quite there, so there’s concern that they’re not where they need to be.

We’ve got to work hard together to get that confidence back and get our game to a point where we’re happy with it.

None of us are happy with it at the moment because we’re not playing well, but you’ve got to give some credit to the opposition.

Teams have stepped right up against us and we’re not playing as well as we were, which has been reflected in results.

Daryl Clark looks for offload options (Image: PA Wire)

Q: How do you go about fixing it as head coach? Is it tweaking things systematically? Is it changing personnel?

DP: Personnel wise, we’re a little bit light. Back row is a little bit of an issue, which then impacts on the middle.

We have to work with the coaching staff, the playing group and the leaders to build our game back up.

It’s there – we’ve seen it’s there, but you have periods where it’s not where you want it to be and you have to find your way out of it.

That’s what coaching is about – you have to fix the things you need to while building the players’ confidence.

If we stick together and keep working hard, it will come.

It’s not that we’re not working hard – I thought we worked exceptionally hard today, but we weren’t good enough.

There’s a couple of reasons for that which we have to work through and we’ll crack on with that from tomorrow.