WOLVES head of coaching and rugby Tony Smith hailed his side's defensive effort after they sealed a 16-8 win against Wigan on Friday night.

After facing six consecutive sets on their own line to start the game, Warrington had plenty of defending to do.

But the only time their line was breached was when Cameron Phelps touched down Sam Tomkins' grubber inside three minutes.

Aside from that, Wolves tackled anything that moved to give themselves a solid platform for the eventual victory.

"It was a lot better than last week," said Smith.

"We still had some errors in us but it was a different sort of errors.

"We went about it in a different way, there was much more energy and much more enthusiasm in our performance.

"We're a little frustrated we made that many errors but that was on the back of starting a game with six sets on your own line. Eight minutes of tackling.

"I challenge the average person to tackle for eight minutes and see how you feel, I get tired just thinking about it, even watching it.

"This is where the boys are getting to, they're disappointed about conceding a try in that period because it was actually stoppable.

"Aside from that, defensively I thought we were very good."

Despite replying to Phelps' opener through a Matt King touchdown before the break, Wolves did not actually take the lead until the 57th minute when Chris Riley scored and Chris Bridge converted.

Before then, errors and poor execution had prevented Warrington turning their possession into points, although Smith says his side never panicked and always knew the breakthrough would come.

He said: "The game had turned even earlier than the second half I thought. All that swung around our way even before half time.

"While the scoreline might not have been in our favour, I thought we were the dominant team.

"So it didn't matter that we weren't scoring, we could feel it was coming and that's what we talked about at half time.

"The game had swung our way and it was just a matter of time before we scored points. We just had to execute a bit better with some of our plays.

"The only scary moments we had were off kicks. That says something about our defence because Wigan have got some terrific attacking players, they're big handfuls, so it was a big effort to do that.

"They're a dangerous team and they're going to beat plenty of teams before the end of the season so we're happy to get through that."