DARYL POWELL admitted talk of home woe was having a “negative impact” before Wakefield Trinity finally earned a first victory back in Super League at the DIY Kitchens Stadium.
Trinity won their first home game this season at the fourth time of asking – and a fifth to top-flight opposition including their Challenge Cup exit to Leigh Leopards – but had to come from twelve points down to edge rivals Castleford Tigers 13-12.
“I stopped talking about it because I think the more you talk about a specific thing, the worse it gets,” said coach Powell of their home record.
“I didn’t want to go down that road. I shut it down because I couldn’t talk about it anymore. It was having a negative impact which I didn’t want.
“It is a big one, to be honest. Our fans were booing at half-time which I was a bit disappointed with, because the boys are giving everything.
“We’re not going to win every game this year but they need to understand a bit more than they did there.
“We’re in it together. I think they can see the boys are digging in. We won’t get everything right – Rugby League isn’t one of those games where it looks pretty all the time.
“In derbies emotion is involved, and the opposition get a couple of bits on you, but sometimes that’s the way it is and you’ve got to fight your way out of it.
“The hard thing is last year we hardly lost a game, so there’s kind of a new expectation. And we have high expectations of ourselves, but we won’t win every game in Super League.”
Powell did, however, admit that his side were out-enthused at the beginning their lowly opposition.
“I felt like Cas wanted to the win game a bit more than we did in the first half,” he said.
“They were more vigorous in their contact, they were coming after us and they built a lead.
“There was a bit of a flip there (in the second half) and we needed to tweak our attacking shape, but we’re finding it tough with one half and it isn’t the same when your spine isn’t how it should be.
“We’ve done a good job to dig our way out of that.
“It took us a long time but I thought we were getting there – I thought energy was just slipping away from Castleford.
“Then we got a pretty important try and it’s game on, but even at the end how does he (Mason Lino) nail that drop-goal so sweet?
“Luckily for us it fell in our favour. We’re really pleased to win but we have a lot to fix up, and we have to toughen up mentally to make sure we play a little better than both first halves the last couple of weeks.”
