Wakefield boss provides injury update on Will Dagger and Kelepi Tanginoa

Wakefield coach Mark Applegarth has revealed why full-back Will Dagger was a late withdrawal ahead of their match at Wigan.

Dagger was initially named in Wakefield’s starting line-up, but pulled out late on due to a recurring back injury in the warm-up.

Trinity suffered their 10th straight defeat of the season as they remain rooted to the bottom of the Super League table.

“It is a lay over from last week,” Applegarth explained. “He hurt his back last week and we had to bring him off.

“He managed to train on Thursday and Friday, so he put his hand up and said he was good. But in the warm-up he went in to a collision and started feeling some shooting pains down his side so we had to pull him out.

“It was probably still a week too early for him. We had to move Liam Kay to full-back who I thought did a cracking job to say he’s not an out and out full-back, and then we had to use Matty Ashurst as an emergency nine.

“The lads are showing up and playing for each other but that’s the way it goes sometimes, you’ve just got to deal with it.”

The latest on Kelepi Tanginoa

Star forward Kelepi Tanginoa didn’t feature in Wakefield’s defeat Wigan, but he will be back for their next game at Warrington in a fortnight.

“As tempting as it is for me to play him, he was 50/50 for today, he maybe could have got through it,” Applegarth said.

“He was 50/50 the last time we played Wigan and if you remember he came off after 45 seconds so a bit of common sense kicked in for me.

“As much as I’m desperate to get him back out on the field because he’s a devastating player for us, that extra week or so will be massively beneficial for him.

“As long as we don’t have any more hiccups, you should see Kelepi back in contention for that Warrington game.”

Mark Applegarth: We are fighting for each other

Applegarth said he was proud of his side’s effort in their defeat at Wigan, but bemoaned their individual errors.

“I thought we coughed up too many yardage errors in the first half,” he added.

“It felt like we were constantly defending our try-line and against a team of Wigan’s quality you can’t afford to be doing that. I thought that was the difference in the first half.

“There were a couple of individual errors for a couple of their tries and I thought there was one well worked try down their left edge.

“We fixed a few things up at half-time, I can’t fault the lads for their desire to work hard for one another but them individual errors that hurt us are pretty bad.

“When you play a team that are going to be competing for honours at the end of the season and you gift them some easy field position, then they are going to pull the trigger and hurt you which we found out today.

“You can see they are fighting hard for one another and there’s a few lads playing to capacity and giving it everything they’ve got, we’ve just got to stick at it and have the belief that we can turn it around.”

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