WARRINGTON Wolves coach Darryl Van de Velde praised his team's tackling at Wakefield but he was not happy that his defence was called on as often as it was.

He said: "We gave them too much ball in the first half. We didn't hold the ball or complete our sets of six. We were pushing passes that weren't on and our kicking game was non-existent.

"The weight of possession was probably 70 to 30 in Wakefield's favour so the defence needed to be strong.

"There were times when there were charge downs and we were conceding penalties late in the tackle count and so Wakefield were having 12 and 18 tackles going at our line.

"But we hung on, we only conceded one try in that period so that is probably the biggest bonus for us coming out of the game. Having said that, there were still some first-hit defence misses so there is room for improvement in the defence too."

Van de Velde had some stern words to say to his troops at half-time and it made all the difference.

He said: "I was disappointed at half-time by the first half effort. We got back to basics in the second half and we showed what we can do by putting 32 points past them."

The problems the Wolves players experienced in the first half was a similar tale to Warrington's pre-season friendly at Salford Reds.

Van de Velde said: "When you have a lot of new players you are going to have this problem. We have 12 new players and it is going to take time.

"It is a matter of the players running the right angles, getting the ball to the right blokes at the right time, not having to catch passes off the mark.

"All these things were putting us under pressure. The team has to settle down and work through the process rather than going at it at 100 miles per hour.

"In the second half the team knuckled down pretty well and went through it methodically. We ran in some good tries in the second half but we've got to get it right from the start.

"We can't give teams a start like we did at Wakefield on Sunday at Super League level because you end up putting yourself under too much pressure.

"We've got a lot of hard work still to do."

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