Wolves wilted in heat of battering after the break
WARRINGTON WOLVES succumbed to their seventh defeat of the season after a second-half peppering in Perpignan.
“I’m not sure the scoreline reflects the game to be fair but we need to be a whole lot better,” said coach Daryl Powell.
Warrington held the Dragons to a 6-6 half-time stalemate but five second-half tries saw the home side worthy winners.
“There were some big turning points in the game and the referees might need to take a hard look at themselves,” he added.
“There are some games where they are just calling it wrong.
“Having said that, Catalans have got some pretty big dudes out there on the pitch and we need to learn how to handle them better.
“It’s always physical and fast here and we are not handling things as well as we should do at the moment.
“There are some positives. Some of our younger players, like Connor Wrench, were really good for us. It was a massive game for them but collectively we can’t play like that in our next game against St Helens.”
Sam Tomkins was first to trouble the scoreboard with a seventhminute penalty goal after Warrington secondrower Oliver Holmes was punished for a high tackle on Arthur Mourgue.
But Wolves scored the first try, winger Wrench in at the right corner and Peter Mata’utia was on target from the touchline with the conversion to make it 6-2.
Tom Davies hit back for Catalans in the 23rd minute after he collected a clever slip-pass from the tackle by his centre Tyrone May to level the scores which remained 6-6 at half-time.
The Dragons came out firing after the break with an early penalty from Tomkins.
But Warrington hit back when Mitchell Pearce went high on Josh Thewlis and up stepped Mata’utia to level the scores.
Catalans then worked the ball to the other end of the field where Pearce side-stepped and twisted over the line to make it 14-8 in the 57th minute.
The Dragons trapped Thewlis in his own in-goal area to force another drop from between the posts, and Warrington went further behind to a 65th-minute penalty when Jason Clarke was deemed to have interfered at the play-the-ball.
Sam Kasiano then burst up the middle of the pitch to release fellow prop Gil Dudson, who slid over the line beneath the posts, Tomkins adding the conversion for 28-8.
Then Kasiano cut loose again to put winger Fouad Yaha in at the left corner, the try making him the club’s all-time try-scorer
with 88 touchdowns.