ASSISTANT coach Martin Gleeson says there were “some real positive signs” from Warrington Wolves’ youngsters during Friday night’s opening pre-season friendly.

A youthful Wire side held off a late surge from neighbours Widnes Vikings to win 46-40 in an entertaining affair at The Halliwell Jones Stadium.

They recovered from falling 10-0 down in the opening minutes to open up a 34-16 lead at half time, with Tom Whitehead touching down twice to go with further efforts from Max Wood, Luke Thomas, Cai Taylor-Wray and Brad Dwyer.

New signing Wood and livewire full-back Taylor-Wray doubled their tallies after the interval and despite a strong finish from the Vikings, the young Wires were able to hold out.

While insisting there was still plenty to work on, Gleeson said he was delighted by what the players showed in with head coach Sam Burgess watching on for his first game in charge.

“We had a very young team out there that got a lot younger in the second half, but we saw some real positive signs,” he said.

“That was especially with our go-forward and our defence after a kick was very good, but we let ourselves down on our line a little bit especially in the second half.

“It’s work in progress for the club as a whole.

“We’re trying to line everything up in terms of how we defend and how we attack, which is going to take a little bit of time but it’s a journey we’re on.

“We’re really pleased with bits of it but in others, we were a bit off.

“We had the adversity with the senior players dropping out, but we then go 10-0 down without even touching the ball – for that group of young players to switch on and go “right, it’s gone, what’s next” was pretty good.”

As Gleeson mentioned, The Wire were hit by the withdrawals of senior players from the named side in the shape of club captain Stefan Ratchford, new signing Rodrick Tai and reigning Super League Young Player of the Year Josh Thewlis through injury.

That meant forward Tom Whitehead played alongside Leon Hayes in the halves while Taylor-Wray got a chance at full-back in Thewlis’ absence.

Before either could get their hands on the ball, however, tries from Max Roberts and Matt Fleming had put the Championship side 10-0 up but Wire’s response was impressive.

“Those first tries were pretty unavoidable – the first kick-off goes pretty much at the crossbar,” Gleeson said.

“We defended it pretty well but they got us with two kicks that were on the money, which is tough to stop.

“For the lads to not let that phase them was great and we just powered through them after that.

“Brad Dwyer did really well, as did Max Wood and Thommo (Luke Thomas). They were hard to handle.

“I have to give Tom Whitehead a rap – we were due to have Stef and Josh play with Leon Hayes, but we’ve had to put him as a forward at six and then Cai at full-back.

“They haven’t really trained together, so we had to simplify what we were doing which suited us anyway.”

Wire were able to dominate Widnes towards the end of the first half by playing a quick and direct style, with hooker Dwyer to the fore as his sharpness and ability to bring his forwards onto the ball proved too much for the visitors to handle.

Given the team’s unfamiliarity with each other, Gleeson says a more simplistic approach was the natural way to go.

“We had a lot of options but we chose to hit through the middle,” he said.

“A lot of that was personnel – a lot of those lads only had a captain’s run together, so their timing will have been off.

“They got a few later on – once we got a bit more possession on their tryline, we scored some nice tries.

“Tonight was about being physical and doing the basics of rugby right.

“We took the shorter options and the message was that it would open up for them later in the game, which it did.”