WARRINGTON Wolves head of coaching and rugby Tony Smith says sticking together and hard work are the only ways to get out of the current mess after hitting rock bottom at the Twickenham Stoop.

Wolves, who have equalled their worst ever start to a season with today’s fifth defeat at Harlequins, were booed off the field at the end of the 60-8 mauling, with the fans also chanting ‘You’re not fit to wear the shirt’ at the players.

Smith agreed the chanting hurts and added: “I don’t know there’s much they can say in response to it. The way to respond is by your actions on the field and that’s where it’s got to come.

“You can sulk about those things or you can get on with life. You can go and work hard to try and rectify things.

“If anyone wants to sulk they can do that. If there’s people who want to work hard and turn things around they can come with me.”

Harlequins coach Brian McDermott felt the score line flattered his side somewhat.

But Smith said: “Rarely does the scoreboard lie.

“I thought we deserved that scoreline and that they deserved that scoreline. I thought Harlequins worked exceptionally hard for it.

“They’ve been a very solid team for the last two or three years in building up.

“They showed what they can do when they work together and we’ve got to take some lessons from that and start to rebuild.

“We’ve probably hit the bottom and sometimes you’ve got to hit the bottom before you start to go up again.

“Hopefully, that is the bottom and we can start to work tradesman-like and work for each other.”

Smith doesn’t feel the job is any harder than he first thought on the back of this latest performance.

“ I knew there was going to be a job to do and it would take time. I haven’t shied away from that,” he said “When things go against you for a while it takes some time to turn around. It’s going to take some hard work and determination.

“It takes time to turn things around and you can get the momentum going your way. Then it feels like you can’t do anything wrong.

“That’s how it looked for Harlequins. It looked like things weren’t going to go against them at all. We’ve got to get to that sort of stage but we’re a bit off that at the moment.”

Smith does not feel the answer to the team’s problems is releasing players and bringing in fresh blood, even if there were options available.

He said: “We’re just not gelling as a team at the moment. I think when we do that we’ll be very tough to beat but we’re a bit off that as we’ve seen today.

“I don’t think it’s a talent issue and I don’t know if it’s a time when you cast people off either.

“We may have to make some changes to the squad in terms of who starts games and who gets a start next week but in terms of getting rid of people or getting people in – it’s a time to stick together really.

“I’m not a big advocate of getting rid of somebody because you’ve had a bad performance.

“We need to stick tight sometimes and put some faith in some people and restore some confidence in one another. It’s a time to pull together rather than look to add to the squad.”

So how does he go about restoring confidence?

“Hard work. I don’t know any other way,” he said.

“If Tiger Woods isn’t hitting his driver very well, I think his solution would be to go and hit some more balls.

“How else do you do it? Do you go and sleep on it and hope that when you wake up it all turns out nicely. No. You work hard, it’s the only way that I’m aware of, the only sure thing to build confidence.

“We need some hard work and good practice. When we turn it around we’ll add the confidence.”

At 12-8 21 minutes into the first half there was no indication the margin of defeat would be so wide although Wolves were conceding points too easily.

Smith said: “I thought we were pretty soft at our end. At that stage I didn’t think that Harlequins were that great at defending their end.

“We got down their end three times and scored twice. Unfortunately, they were getting down to our end four times and scoring three times.

“Had we have been a bit better with the ball, I was a bit fearful it could have been one of those big blow-out scores for both teams, where you’re not happy with your defence.

“But they tightened up and we didn’t. All credit to them, they fixed some of their side of it up and we didn’t.

“Unfortunately, they got on a bigger roll than we would have liked and once that happens it’s very difficult to stop.”

Smith concluded in a way that seemed fitting to the performance, asking: “Any more tortuous questions for me?”