WARRINGTON making the Super League play-offs in October is only a dim possibility following Sunday's defeat to St Helens, admitted coach Darryl Van de Velde.

The Wolves are now seven points adrift of fifth place with seven games of the season to go and it would take a remarkable run of poor results from other teams to put them back in the frame.

But the coach has no intention of allowing his side to drop their intensity for the remainder of the season.

He said: "The play-offs are getting more and more remote but you never know what's going to happen for sure until it's mathematically impossible. The supporters are still out there watching and we've got to aim to win every football game for them."

The coach refused to blame the Wolves' disappointing second half display on Sunday on playing into a low summer sun, despite Saints coach Shaun McRae putting his side's problems in the first 40 minutes down to the conditions.

He said: "We missed a lot of one on one tackles and didn't concentrate like we did in the first half. We got off to a positive start, played well and controlled the ball to put them under a lot of pressure.

"But we didn't make it count in terms of scoring tries and they made us pay for that in the second half.

"We didn't control the game in the same way and gave them more time to come at us which you just can't do that against a side like St Helens.

"Unfortunately, we seemed to ignite them when we scored a try after half-time and we were completely outclassed in the second half after that."

Van de Velde felt John Duffy should have caught the Tommy Martyn bomb that he spilt under pressure from Sean Long, leading to the Paul Sculthorpe try that put Saints back in the driving seat.

He said: "It was there to be taken and he didn't seem to get under it properly. He had people coming towards him and he let them distract him from the job."

And the coach also expressed his disappointment at the officials' failure to spot a forward pass from Sculthorpe to Paul Newlove in the build up to the try that gave St Helens a crucial 22-12 lead.

He said: "Nowadays we've got a referee, two touch judges and a video referee and we still can't get it right during crucial parts of the game."

Stand off Adam Doyle looks for a way through the St. Helens defence while substitute Danny Whittle shouts encouragement and the Saints pack look on.Pics: MIKE BODEN

By PHIL HOWARTH

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.