TONY Smith said Warrington Wolves’ players should be proud of their efforts in securing success against Hull FC at the KC Stadium on Saturday night.

“We were poor in the first half,” said Wolves’ head of coaching and rugby.

“We were really disappointed with the way we performed with some of our ball handling.

“That was the first wet game we’ve had to deal with for a little while.

“We’ve been playing pretty fluently with the ball in recent times but I don’t think we handled the weather well.

“I thought we probably didn’t handle having to defend early in the match very well. It took some gas out of our tank.

“But I tell you something.

“Our players should be very proud of themselves for the way they pulled together in the second half and dug out a game of rugby league.

“When you’re playing poorly and then turn it round and control the game in the way that they did to bring themselves back into it, that’s pretty good going.

“They deserve every bit of credit for their second-half display.

“They did a very good job in the way they built the game, tactically and with their execution, with the exception of only one or two errors in the back half.

“I’m not a coach who is big on completion, but I think we did put seven or eight sets together without an error.

“Some of those were finished with kicks in the in-goal.

“I thought Lee Briers stepped up tactically, he was very good, and I’ve got to mention the skipper.

“I thought Adrian Morley was absolutely outstanding. He just put his hand up all day.

“You noticed when he was on the field and when he wasn’t. He just made a huge difference to us and doing that after coming back from injury I thought was outstanding.”