WARRINGTON Wolves’ packmen were off the boil against Leigh Leopards last week and they have been challenged to respond when they take to the field at St James’ Park in Newcastle on Sunday, kick-off 4.30pm.

Head coach Daryl Powell admitted his troops were dominated by Leigh and that needs to change so a platform can be laid for the half-backs to work their Magic Weekend magic.

“I thought we were really good in that area against Catalans the week before,” he said.

“And then we were off against Leigh.

“I mentioned it without wanting to make excuses straight after, but a six-day turnaround on the back of going to Catalans – we’ve had to do that twice this year - is not ideal. But it’s not an excuse.

“We have to step up as a pack. We’ve done some unbelievable things this year and we need to get back to that and get back to our groove.

“For that to happen we need all of those guys playing well individually, that then connects as a whole pack.

“We dropped off in particular last week. I thought Leigh were very good and their intent was exceptional, so we need to respond to what happened to us last week and get back to the form that we know we can deliver as a pack unit.

“And I’m expecting us to do that this week.”

Since the poor showing at Leigh, Powell has spoken about wanting his players and team to get back to doing what they were doing well earlier in the season.

We asked him to break that down, so that Wire fans can get a flavour of what areas he is seeking improvements in.

Powell said: “We want to start games better. We’re making too many errors at the start of the games.

“You talk about energy battles in rugby league and that’s probably a pivotal battle. We made five errors in the first 20-ish minutes last week and that’s always going to put you under pressure.

“That’s one element, but we also need to regain the fluency of our game, which we felt was really good.

“The middle unit was all working well together, the halves were combined, we had a good flow about us. We watched the previous Hull game and then the Castleford game where we had a flow about us and a confidence about us that we need to regain.

“You’re never going to have it all the way through the year, so any dips you have to make them as short as possible.

“We’ve been battling hard to win games without really being at our best but I think we’ve just got a good opportunity to get back on track, find a fluency and also find a start that looks like we want it to – where we’re in a battle, we’re putting pressure on the opposition and taking energy out of the opposition to help ourselves.”

We asked The Wire boss if the work that needs doing to reignite the sparks is conversational or through practice on the training field.

He said: “It’s a bit of both, a bit of talk with individuals to find out where they’re at and making some suggestions on what we need to do individually, but then it’s on the training field and how do we play in certain scenarios.

“We try to do a fair bit of scenario-based work, which is hard because it’s not an actual game where the pressure is on, but we can find our way through different scenarios and learn about what we need to do.

“In the heat of it, there are some things we are not getting quite right. We’ve broken some of that down this week and we’ll look to apply it against Hull on Sunday.”

The Wire will be heading to Newcastle after training on Saturday morning and staying in a hotel overnight.