‘He looked sharp’ – Daryl Powell on the silver lining in Warrington’s Magic defeat

Warrington coach Daryl Powell was made up to see Connor Wrench make his long-awaited comeback from an ACL injury at Magic Weekend.

On Sunday, the 21-year-old played his first game back in Powell’s first team since suffering an ACL injury last August as the Wolves went down to a 30-18 defeat against Hull in Newcastle.

The outside-back scored two tries on his return, which was a silver lining for Warrington’s defeat at Magic, their fourth defeat in six Super League matches.

Speaking after the game, Warrington coach Daryl Powell said: “He looked sharp. It was great to see him back out there in the first place because he has come back from a real tough injury.

“I thought he looked sharp and he scored a first try from George’s (Williams) kick and then he executed pretty quickly for his second try so it was good to see him out there.

“We worked hard – it’s not as though we’re not working hard – I thought we worked exceptionally hard but we just weren’t good enough and there’s a couple of different reasons that we need to work through and we’ll crack on with that tomorrow.”

Warrington lacking confidence at the moment, admits Daryl Powell

Despite their recent dip in form, Warrington still sit level on points with leaders Catalans at the top of the Super League table.

Speaking after their Magic defeat, Powell admitted that his side need to regain the confidence they were playing with at the start of the season.

He said: “We have to work with the coaching staff, playing group, the leaders to build our game to where we want it to be.

“It’s there, we’ve seen that it’s there, but throughout the season you have periods where it’s not where you want it to be and that’s what coaching is about. It’s about fixing up the things that you need to whilst building the players’ confidence and that’s what we have to do at the moment.

“We are talking about sticking together and working hard”

“It’s in there, we’ve got loads of class players all over the field. We probably had 17 players on gameday playing well, that’s not quite the case at the moment, so we have to work with the players to get their confidence back up to get their form where it needs to be.

“There are some parts to our game that aren’t great and our confidence is not quite there, so I’m concerned that it’s not quite where it needs to be but we’ve got to work together to make sure we get the confidence back and get our game to where we are happy with it – with and without the ball.

“None of us are happy with it at the moment because we aren’t playing well. You have to give something the opposition as well, teams have stepped up against us and we aren’t playing as well as we were and that’s reflected in the results.”

Warrington will aim to bounce back against Huddersfield at the Halliwell Jones Stadium on Saturday, 5pm kick-off.

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