Chris Riley insists Reds defeat will benefit Wolves

Warrington Wolves’ Chris Riley insists the defeat against Salford will do the team good ahead of their Challenge Cup semi final.

The Wolves lost heavily to Salford 48-24 prior to their match with Catalan on Monday. However Riley was happy to let the defeat go after winning nine of the last 10 matches in both the league and cup.

He said: “I’m not happy we got beat but it’s hopefully going to work in our favour. We sat down and did a long video session and looked at that we need to improve on. 

“Against Hull we put 40 points on them but we didn’t pay that good. There were still errors and mistakes, and maybe we came into the Salford game a week after thinking we were a little bit better than we were at the time.

“We have two big games coming up for us to sort it out and try to finish high as we can in the Super League. Then we will try to get to Wembley.”

Riley admits he thought the Wolves were certain to pick up the two points at the Salford City Stadium, but says his side simply did not stick to the game plan.

He said: “Even through we did rest a few players, the squad we put out was still pretty experienced. 

“We were disappointed we didn’t stick to the game plan early doors, and they did rattle us a bit. We threw the ball around a little bit and forced passes.

“We got into that bad cycle of conceding tries and giving the ball away easy, and we didn’t really put them under pressure until the last 20 minutes of the game, which was pretty pleasing in the end because we started to play the game plan and it came off for us.

“Our defence was off that day and it was something we sat down and spoke about and have worked on in training in the last few days.”

Warrington face Catalan on Monday hoping to avenge the defeat to Salford at the Halliwell Jones Stadium.