Warrington defeat ‘has been coming’ as Daryl Powell credits Leigh

Warrington coach Daryl Powell said he felt like a defeat ‘had been coming’ after their 30-12 defeat at Leigh, saying the better team won.

The Wolves, who currently sit top of the Super League table, suffered only their third defeat of the season at the hands of Leigh, who have won their last six matches.

Leigh took a 14-0 lead inside 24 minutes thanks to tries from Gareth O’Brien and Tom Briscoe as well as three goals from Ben Reynolds.

Warrington pulled one back in the 27th minute as Daryl Clark made a break from inside his own half to assist the supporting George Williams who raced under the posts.

Leigh extended their lead though when O’Brien got his second by showing good support play for an Edwin Ipape break.

Warrington hit back just before the break when Joe Philbin crashed over from close range. The Leopards led 20-12 at half-time.

The Leopards didn’t take their foot off the gas in the second half by posting further tries through Charnley and Ben Reynolds to wrap up an impressive 30-12 win against the league leaders.

Daryl Powell: Leigh throughly deserved the win

Speaking after the game, Powell said he felt like the result had been coming but didn’t take anything away from Leigh’s performance.

He said: “It was a static start. We never really fired a shot in the first half.

“We got a couple of tries, I thought we were lucky to go in (at half-time) at that scoreline. I just thought we got dominated from start to finish.

“We had some opportunities in the second half but we never really had any clarity or cohesion to get the job done.

“We were pretty rattled at that point and it showed in our attacking play, so it was a really disappointing effort.

“I thought they were really good, they played right at the top of their game, their middle unit boys were excellent and just came and bashed us and we didn’t handle it that well.

“We made too many errors and gave too many penalties away and then conceded tries on the back of that, so it was a frustrating way off where we want to be.

“It has probably been coming I think. If you look at couple of weeks, we’ve been sort of winning games but haven’t been great, so I think we’ve got to rediscover a few of the things we were doing earlier in the season and get back to it.

“Thankfully we get another opportunity in a week’s time and we get a bit of a longer turnaround here, so we can freshen the boys up. Coming back from Catalans is always a tough one to be honest, I’m not making any excuses, I thought they thoroughly deserved the win.

“I thought it was disappointing, we had a lot of our fans there and we didn’t get them enough to get behind which is a real disappointment for us.

“It was a tough game but Leigh were great. They just dominated us in pretty much every facet of the game and fully deserved the win.”

Warrington will aim to bounce back next Sunday at Magic Weekend in Newcastle when they face Hull FC, 4:30pm kick-off.

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