Warrington rugby league coach Tony Smith feels his men are still finding their feet this season even though they showed no signs of rustiness in a 50-10 mauling of the London Broncos.
Former Australia international Joel Monaghan scored twice for the Wolves, who had to come from behind at the Halliwell Jones Stadium before running out comfortable victors on Sunday.
Former Manly Sea Eagle Michael Witt converted his own try to put the Broncos into a shock early lead against a Wolves side that had struggled to a 20-20 draw with Hull on the opening day of the Super League season.
But the Wolves are made of stern stuff and two scores from Chris Bridge and tries from Monaghan and Ryan Atkins meant the home side went in 22-10 at the break.
And the home side pulled away in the second-half with five more tries to bring up the half-century, much to the delight of Smith.
“I thought we were really patchy in the first half but I was really happy with the way we came out in the second,” he said.
“We are still coming to terms with the different interpretations this year. It’s a slow style we’re playing and once we came to terms with that we controlled things better.
“All the games so far have a different pace to what they have been and that’s the way we are playing now and we will take a little time to adjust to those sorts of things and when we do we do ok.”
It was a historic weekend for last year’s Super League runners-up St Helens as they christened their new home at Langtree Park with a come-from-behind 38-10 win against Salford City Reds.
Royce Simmons’ men were slow out of the blocks and soon found themselves 10-0 down to scores from Jodie Broughton and Ashley Gibson.
But they bounced back in fine style with Iosia Soliola and Anthony Laffranchi amongst the scorers.
Simmons admitted the occasion had been to blame for his side’s sluggish start.
“For a month now or more everyone has been talking about this opening and how it is special, the crowd will be massive and all that,” he said.
“Although I think the players turned up with the right attitude and wanted to do their best out there, I think they wanted to do it more as individuals.
“We had blokes coming out of the line to make big hits and missing people and making individual plays and when you do that your ball control suffers and that’s what happened.
Elsewhere, Leeds coach Brian McDermott refused to accept that the distraction of the World Club Challenge this coming Friday against Manly Warringah had any bearing on his side’s poor performance in their 20-6 defeat to arch rivals Wigan.
“Whether we had the World Club Challenge next week or not, we were going to go head strong for this and try and build some momentum,” said McDermott.
“We still needed to get two points so I don’t think it had any effect whatsoever.”
