WHILE pleased with the spirit his side showed to fight back, Sam Burgess admits Warrington Wolves’ nightmare start against Catalans Dragons left them with too much to do.

Within 13 minutes of the Round Six clash at The Halliwell Jones Stadium, the hosts were 18-0 down and had lost prop Paul Vaughan to the sin bin as the French men took control.

Then, having cut the deficit to six points at the break, a poor start to the second half saw Catalans score twice more to move 16 points ahead.

Another fightback was mounted and George Williams’ try got them back to within four points with still a quarter of the game remaining, but they could not overhaul the Dragons and Jordan Abdull touched down late on to seal victory for the visitors.

“If you give 18 points away, it’s too much,” Burgess said.

“We showed some spirit to get back into it, but it was too much in the end.

“It’s disappointing for the team because our standards have been really high from the pre-season.

“We missed the jump early, we got the momentum back at times but we missed it again early in the second half.

“There’s a couple of things we might need to have a look at – there were some great efforts out there but we conceded too many points. It’s hard to get the win when you do that.

“I wasn’t expecting that start. It was a big game in front of our home crowd against a team who got us in Round One, so I definitely didn’t expect it.

“We started both halves pretty poorly and Catalans are a great side – they’re physical and well coached so it’s difficult to get momentum back from them.

“Ultimately, defensively we missed our assignment. Letting in 30 points against anyone, you really don’t deserve to win.”

With Catalans having dealt Warrington their only defeat of the campaign to date before today, the match was being viewed as a measure of the team’s progress since then under Burgess.

So does the head coach feel his side are in a better position now?

“We’re 0-2 in those games, so that’s the stat,” he said.

“There’s everything in the middle of that in terms of performances, good bits and bad bits, but there’s no doubt that we’ve improved. I really do think that.

“Just because of one poor performance, I’m not going to change too much. We’ll learn a lot from that tonight.”

One positive Burgess did take was the performance of Leon Hayes, who had the fit-again George Williams alongside him in the halves.

With Josh Drinkwater nearing full fitness after a calf injury, there is certainly a decision for Burgess to make as to who partners Williams moving forward.

“It’s my job to make those calls and Leon is doing a good job at the moment,” he said.

“We were on the back foot for most of the game but he continued to get his job done.

“There’s things we can take out of it, but there’s so much I don’t want to take out of it but we’ll dust off.

“We can’t dwell on it for too long – we’ve got to take the lessons and move forward together.”