DARYL Powell insists there have been no conversations with the Warrington Wolves hierarchy about his position being under threat.

Following Thursday's 22-6 loss to Leeds Rhinos - The Wire's fifth defeat in six matches - boos rang out around The Halliwell Jones Stadium with many supporters fiercely critical of the head coach.

In his post-match press conference, he discussed his position and the reaction of supporters to what was another disappointing evening.

Here is everything he said...

Warrington Guardian:

Q: We saw you having a long think in your coaching box after full time so just talk us through what your feelings are after that?

DP: The performance is just way off – we’ve got ourselves into a situation where we’re trying to piece a team together.

The half-back combination is different again – we get Drinky (Josh Drinkwater) back but he’s got a different partner – so there’s things in there that are difficult for the team, but we’re not defending well and we’re not great with the ball.

We’re just trying to find ourselves at the moment and we’re finding it tough, but that was disappointing tonight.

I was talking with Shez (Ryan Sheridan, assistant coach) about where we’re at and what we need to do to get ourselves moving back in the right direction.

Q: You named Matt Dufty in the halves, which was worth a try as it had some joy last week but I guess he found defending in that position is a whole lot different to doing so at full-back?

DP: On that right edge, there’s clearly an issue in the back row.

Adam Holroyd came in and worked exceptionally hard for his second game back, but we’re having problems with depth. Josh McGuire going made it difficult for us with Matty Nicholson being injured, and then Jimmy Harrison gets suspended.

We’re just way off at the moment. Defensively we’re nowhere near good enough and we have to fix that up.

I thought we did really well to be where we were at half time because we were under a lot of pressure – Sam Kasiano gets sin-binned which puts us under massive pressure but we hung on.

At half time, I thought we could give ourselves a chance if we got our game together and that’s what it’s been like recently.

We’ve made errors in the second half again which didn’t allow us to build any pressure or score points, and then when we did score points we drop the ball the next time we’re up there.

If we score there, at 16-12 you’re thinking there’s a chance of having a shot at it.

We’re disappointed as a team at the moment, but we have to find our way out of it.

Q: Leeds are a difficult side to stop when they’re on a roll and they certainly were in that opening quarter, but did you do enough to stop them?

DP: I don’t think we were ever comfortable defensively.

They defended better than we did and were a lot tighter, but I thought our back three were outstanding tonight. They took some tough and aggressive carries in and defended a lot of kicks when we were in poor field position.

If you look at Leeds, they’ve had their own ups and downs but they’ve found a little bit of form last week and they played really well early on.

Q: You said earlier in the week that the players’ confidence was high and that they were bouncing around in training, but I guess the question is why is that not being translated to match days at the moment?

DP: It is a very different thing. I said the players had a lot of energy about them and they did.

We’re losing rucks consistently, which means we’re giving massive metres up and getting dominated in terms of territory.

Earlier on in the season, we were winning everything in that regard but we’re nowhere near that at the moment.

There’s different reasons for that but in terms of solutions, we’ve got to find one on the training field that translates to the playing field.

It’s hard at the moment because I can’t take any middles out if they need resting or even dropping – I can’t do that.

You’re then talking about bashing each other in training on five and six-day turnarounds, which is what we need to do to change what we’re doing, but it’s hard in the middle of a season.

It’s not translating because our training time is not massive but I’m not making any excuses.

Getting people like Jimmy Harrison, Matty Nicholson and George Williams back out there will start to make us look a little different, but that’s a few weeks away. It’s not going to help us next week.

Our mentality and our work ethic has to improve.

Q: So there’s no chance of anybody being back to alleviate things next week? Or are you even close to bringing anybody new in?

DP: We’re hopefully close-ish but it’s not 100 per cent.

We’ve worked pretty hard to get people in but we don’t want to bring anybody in who isn’t going to help us moving forward.

We’re trying to get the right people in who will help us down the track, but there’s a lot of players injured at the moment and teams don’t want to let players go.

Q: It doesn’t get any easier with Saints next week and Wigan to follow and there’s clearly a lot of unhappy fans out there as evidenced by the booing at full time.

What would you say to those people who are clearly unimpressed with what’s going on?

DP: I’d say to them it’s a long season.

Wigan’s fans weren’t happy a few weeks ago, Leeds fans weren’t happy a few weeks ago, Huddersfield fans haven’t been happy all season, St Helens fans weren’t happy after being where they were after winning the World Club…

It’s Super League life, isn’t it? I want everybody to be happy and for us to be flying, but there’s a lot of moving parts in a rugby league team.

I understand it but all I can do is work hard, and good things generally happen around hard work.

We’ve all got a responsibility – the players have got a responsibility to get themselves on form, I’ve got a responsibility to piece the team together and get us flowing.

It’s not hard to see there’s a lot of movement in the team at the moment, which isn’t conducive to us being as consistent as we’d like to be at the moment. It’s obvious.

Q: Were you shocked in any way by the reaction of the fans and how quickly things seemed to have turned on that front?

DP: I disagree with booing at any point, to be honest, because I thought there was a lot of effort out there tonight.

Anybody who’s played rugby league knows how tough it is.

I get the disappointment because I’m disappointed – everything I do is out there tonight, but I don’t think it’s helpful.

How does that help a team get any better? It just makes them feel more nervous, but I can’t control what fans think.

All I can do is do my job to the best of my ability and get this team playing as well as we can, but this is a long season.

If you look at Leeds last season, they were struggling and where did they end up?

For us, it’s about stabilising, getting our team back together and hopefully getting some recruits in to help us improve.

It’s about being in the top six. We’re nowhere near as consistent as we want to be at the moment, but what’s it all about?

It’s about being in the top six at the end of the year and while it’s disappointing we’re not consistent, look at the team and make your own decision.

If you’re booing the players, you’re not supporting the players.

Everything was buzzing through the first eight games, but it wasn’t going to stay like that all the time. Sport’s not like that, is it?

We need people to stick with us, we need to be in the top six at the end of the year and get to a Grand Final.

It’s been done plenty of times before from really difficult positions. We’re in a really good position but the difficulty for us at the minute is our form isn’t great.

Neither is our selection choice but the sooner that balances out, the more like us we’ll start to look.

Q: There’s a lot of talk about pressure on coaches but is there any pressure on you from those above you?

DP: Fitzy (Karl Fitzpatrick) and I talk all the time – we were talking this week about recruitment, but he probably wouldn’t be talking to me if that was the case.

We have to keep level heads and keep ourselves focused on what we’re trying to do.

Our squad at the moment is not massive and we’re trying to tidy that up, but there’s nothing of that regard at all.

Q: On Sam Kasiano, are you planning on having him missing next week? And what were you saying to him after his sin-binning?

DP: Just stop doing it. His discipline today just wasn’t good enough – he needs to tidy his game up.

I was saying that to all of the players, asking them what gets them back on their game. Not playing the ball properly and giving away penalties for talking back to the referee is just not acceptable.

I don’t think it was a terrible challenge to be honest. I’d be surprised if he gets banned for that.