Warrington Wolves 32 Wakefield Trinity 18, match verdict

Why? Because it followed the pattern of the two home defeats their side suffered to Wakefield last year, both of which came within a week of each other.

They raced into a good lead thanks to a positive start before taking their foot off the pedal and letting their grounded opponents rise from the canvas and start landing punches of their own.

Oh yes, things were looking painfully familiar and for a short period, it looked a distinct possibility that against all the odds, it would be The Wire that became the first side to lose to Trinity this year.

This time, though, they found a way to win and that was the most important thing to Daryl Powell and his players – while some on the terraces were demanding points difference-boosting thrashings, internally they just wanted to get back on the horse by hook or by crook.

Would they have done so without Kevin Proctor’s red card? There is an argument to say they would have done – they were certainly turning the screw before his nasty-looking high shot on Josh Thewlis and had they continued in that vain, the dam surely would have breached.

What can be said for certain, though, is it gave them a huge helping hand at the very least and allowed them to put together a scoreline that looked more convincing on paper than it maybe did in practice.

And as a result, they look down upon the rest again from the top of Super League after 11 rounds and we all would have taken that in February.

When the performance is analysed as it no doubt will be, however, the players and coaches will know that in order to stay at the summit, they will need to be a lot better than they were.

At times towards the end of the first half, they lacked energy – a concern given a lot of the players were coming off a two-week break – and their drop-off in concentration to allow Wakefield back into the game was alarming.

Some of the credit for that has to go to a Trinity side who showed plenty of mettle and fight, but their cause was helped by their hosts continuing to shoot themselves in the foot.

To that end, does this game leave Daryl Powell with more questions than answers about his side? And will the team that faces in-form Hull KR on Friday look much different?

The moving of Matt Dufty to the bench to allow Josh Thewlis to play at full-back should act as a shout-out that nobody’s place in the team is fully safe and given the youngster’s generally effective display in his preferred position, there is an argument to say he should stay there.

What Powell did say for definite, though, is that a repeat performance of this kind will be nowhere near enough against the rampant Robins.